[CHAPTER VI—OSCEOLA]
Bill was conscious of the amphibian’s upward swing as she leveled off preparatory to landing. Her tail dropped slightly and a second or two later she was gliding through smooth water propelled by her own momentum.
Electric lights flashed in the prison cabin, illuminating the place with blinding suddenness and making it impossible to see further into the black night outside the porthole.
The plane’s momentum decreased and she stopped with a slight jar. Orders were shouted. Men called to each other to pull on this rope and that. Then the door to the cabin swung open, the prisoners trooped from their cells, and marched up a gangway on to a large wooden dock.
Lanterns glowed in the darkness. Bill caught a glimpse of black water, then he found himself shuffling along a narrow corduroy road with the rest. Great trees arched intertwining branches overhead and cast an even deeper gloom on their path. From time to time the swaying lantern of a guard cast its beam on gnarled trunks covered with creepers which reared upward from black water. There was the rank stench of rotting vegetation in the humid air. Before Bill tramped the log road twenty feet, he was wringing wet with perspiration.
They swung to the right and up a sharp incline, halting before a high stockade. Thick plank doors in the wall of tree-trunks opened inward and the party entered the enclosure. Here arc lights on high wooden standards flooded the yard with brightness. Numerous one-story buildings were set about a large open square of hard baked earth. So far as Bill could see there were no trees within the stockade, nor had any attempt been made to beautify the place. Most of the buildings were of unpainted boards, although the squared logs of several of the largest proved them of more solid construction.
Few people were about. The enclosure was as bare and uninviting as a military training camp. It was toward one of the log buildings that the prisoners were hustled. A guard unbarred an ironbanded door and they were thrust within the building. With a clang the door slammed and at last the band from Shell Island were left to their own devices.
Bill looked about him. The only light came from the arc lights’ rays which shone through barred windows set high in the four walls. This meager illumination cast the place into somber twilight. Their new quarters consisted of a not too roomy, barn-like, rectangular space, the peak of whose slant roof was lost in the shadows overhead. The terrific heat, the reek of perspiring humanity added to the rank odor of the swamp was almost overpowering.
As Bill’s eyes gradually became accustomed to the gloom, he soon discovered that the newcomers were to have plenty of company. Dark figures sprawled in all sorts of attitudes on the damp earthen floor. Most of them seemed sunk in the slumber of exhaustion. A few talked in low tones as though the humidity had sapped all vitality from their voices. From a dark corner came the uncontrolled sobbing of a man in agony.
Bill picked his way over the huddled bodies toward one of the posts in the middle of the room, that helped to support the roof. The clanking chain that connected the ankle cuffs impeded his progress, caught on a projection and sent him headlong on top of another figure crouched on the ground near the post.