Many of you will remember the story of Rupert of Ware, which was told in these pages last Halloween. It is such noble acts as that of his that light up the gloomy narratives of great calamities. This story also has its bright side. Doubtless it has many heroes. We can tell of only one.
It was at Paducah, a river-side town in Kentucky, that a young hero, a boy named "Dad" Little, pushed off in his skiff to rescue some men in a flat-bottomed boat, whom the fierce river was hurrying to destruction on its angry tide. As soon as the boy reached them, they seized his boat and scrambled into it, so that it capsized. Two of them were drowned, and the others, with "Dad" Little, saved themselves by holding on to the overturned boat. As the boat floated near the shore, the brave boy swam to a tree, and climbed up into it, and was not rescued from his cruel position until six hours later.
[PERIL AND PRIVATION.]
BY JAMES PAYN.
II.—ON THE KEYS OF HONDURAS.
Ashton's first task was to range the island. It proved to be thirty miles or so in length, but its only inhabitants were birds and beasts; it was well watered, and full of hills and deep valleys.
In the latter were many fruit trees, and also vines and currant bushes. There was one tree which bore a fruit larger than an orange, oval shaped, and brown without and red within. This he dared not touch until he saw the wild hogs eating it, lest it should be poisonous. Fruit was his only food. He had no weapon to kill any animal, or the means of cooking it when killed. One often reads of producing fire by friction, but unless one has flint and steel this is very difficult. Some savages only know the secret of it, and it is doubtful whether any white man has ever succeeded in it. In Philip Ashton's island there were no matches.
He found tortoise eggs in the sand, which he dug up with a stick, "sometimes a hundred and fifty of them at a time." These he ate, or strung on a strip of palmetto and hung them in the sun. They were very hard and tough, but he was glad to get them. Enormous serpents, twelve and fourteen feet long, were numerous. When they were lying at full length he often took them for "old trunks of trees covered with short moss," and was much astonished when they opened their mouths and hissed at him.
What annoyed him much more, however, were the "small black flies," which harassed him in myriads. To escape them he longed to swim over to a small "key," which, being without trees, and exposed to the wind, was probably free from those pests. He was, however, a very indifferent swimmer, and had no canoe nor the means of making one.