“Okay,” sang out Bill, pulling his parachute from the pack. “I’ll join you as soon as I can.”
Osceola departed, and presently old Sam, after watching Bill for a moment, hobbled off in the opposite direction.
Bill spread out the parachute on the ground and proceeded to cut off a large circular piece of the fabric. Next he cut a piece from the shroud, and painstakingly unravelled strands from the rope. That completed, he cut off three green branches from a nearby sapling—trimmed them, and cut two to a length of approximately eighteen inches and the third somewhat shorter. After notching their ends, he laid the two longer ones side by side and bound the ends together with strands from the parachute rope. The next operation was to bend them outward and apart at the center and to slip the shorter notched stick crosswise between them. When its ends were bound to the other poles to keep it firm and in place, he found himself possessed of an oval wooden frame.
Bill now laid this aside and picked up the piece of fabric he had cut. The outer edge of this he lapped over his oval frame. Then with his knife blade he punched eyelets through the double lap of cloth, and by passing strands of the rope through them, shortly managed to bind the edges of the fabric to his frame. The result was an open-mouthed bag-like container or bucket, which, inasmuch as the fabric was waterproof, would carry any liquid he placed in it.
His task was now completed, so sticking the open knife in a log where Sam on his return would be sure to see it, he set off with his collapsible pail to find drinking water.
The island, which Bill found to be about two miles long by half a mile wide, was covered with a heavy growth of cypress. Some of these trees were very old. He came across many whose trunks and branches were smooth and white, crowned with feathery foliage of a dazzling golden green. These beautiful trees usually grow amid clumps of dark evergreens such as bay, magnolia, and myrtle, and the effect was very striking. The small jungle was tropical in nature: stately palmettos raised their plumed heads toward the brilliant blue sky, and the forest glades were painted bright with flowers.
Bill followed one of the green aisles which wandered through the trees toward the middle of the island. Twice he heard the dull intonation of a distant revolver shot and wondered what luck Sam was having with his substitute for chicken. The wood was alive with birds. All seemed quite tame, and paid no attention to this unusual visitor to their sylvan haunts.
Presently he found the marshy ground that he was looking for; and in a little hollow nearby, a bubbling spring of cold, sweet water. Bill refreshed himself with a long drink of the life-giving liquid. Then he filled his fabric pail and went back to the spot where the conference had been held.
Here he found Sam, who already had a fire going and was plucking the feathers from a big, long-legged bird. On the turf beside him lay another. Bill recognized the great blue heron, familiarly known to the natives of Florida as “the Major.”
“I didn’t know that those things were good eating,” he observed as he hung the waterbucket on a branch in the shade. “Dad shot a couple last year which he has had stuffed. They were pretty skinny—bags of bones, that’s all.”