SHAKESPEARE IN THE FOREST
Like a fire sped by strong winds across a prairie of brown and sun-dried grasses, so did the flames of war sweep across the entire breadth of Florida. For a year had the Indians been preparing for it. Now they were ready to gather in numbers, and fight armies, or scatter in small bands, to spread death and destruction in every direction. The Seminole was about to make a desperate defence of his country, and to teach its invaders that they might not steal it from him with impunity.
Express riders carried news of the war in every direction. Everywhere cabins, farms, and plantations were abandoned, while their owners flocked into forts and settlements for mutual protection and safety.
One day, some two weeks after the events narrated in the preceding chapter, a novel procession was to be seen wending its slow, dusty way along one of the few roads of those times that led from the St. John's River to St. Augustine. The procession presented a confused medley of horsemen, pedestrians, wheeled vehicles, and cattle, and might have reminded one of the migration of a band of Asiatic nomads.
It was indeed a migration, though one directed rather by force of circumstances than by choice. It was a white household, with its servants, cattle, and readily portable effects, fleeing from an abandoned plantation towards St. Augustine for safety against the Indians. None of the party had seen an Indian as yet, but they were reported to be ravaging both banks of the river from Mandarin to Picolata.
At first the young mistress of this particular estate had discredited the reports, for it was only rumored as yet that the Seminoles had really declared war. Her brother being absent from home, she for some time resolutely declined to abandon the house in which he had left her. The neighboring places on either side had been deserted for several days, and their occupants had entreated her to fly with them, but without avail.
"No," she replied; "here Ralph left me, and here I shall stay until he comes again, or until I am driven away by something more real than mere rumors."
At length that "something" came. All night the southern sky was reddened by a dull glow occasionally heightened by jets of flame and columns of sparks.