The Wreck of the Red Bird: A Story of the Carolina Coast

"What is the creature anyhow?" asked Jack, who had suspended his fishing operations to observe the monster. "What did you call it?"

"Well, the gentleman belongs to a large and distinguished family. To speak broadly, he is a plagiostrome chondropterygian, of the sub-order raiiæ, commonly called skates. To define him more particularly, he is a member of the trygonidæ family, familiarly known as sting rays, and called by negroes and fishermen, and nearly every body else on the coast, stingarees."

"Where on earth did you get that jargon from?" asked Charley.

"It isn't jargon, and I got it from my uncle. He told me one day not to call these things stingarees, but sting rays, and then for fun rattled off a lot of scientific talk at me, which I made him repeat until I knew it by heart. What I know about sting rays is this: there are a good many kinds of them in different quarters of the world. In the North they have the American sting ray, which is much larger than ours down here, though we sometimes catch them two or three feet wide. Ours is the European sting ray, I believe; at any rate, it isn't the American. They are all of them closely alike. They are brown on top and white beneath. You see the shape – not unlike that of a turtle, but with something like wings at the sides, and with a skin instead of a shell, and no legs. The most interesting things about them are their long, slender tails. See," picking up the amputated tail and turning it over; "see the gentleman's weapons. Those bony spikes, with their barbed sides, make very ugly wounds whenever the sting ray gets a good shot at a leg or an arm. The negroes say the barbs are poisonous, like a rattlesnake's fangs; but the scientific folk dispute that. However that may be, a man was laid up for three months right here in Bluffton, during the war, with a foot so bad that the surgeons thought they would have to cut it off, and all from a very slight wound by a sting-ray."

"Ugh!" cried Jack. "It isn't necessary to suppose poison; to have one of those horrible bones driven into your flesh and then drawn out with the notches all turned the wrong way, is enough to make any amount of trouble, without adding poison."

"Perhaps that accounts for the stories told of the Indians shooting poisoned arrows," said Ned. "They used sting-ray stings for arrow-heads at any rate."

"And very capital arrow-heads they would make," said Charley, examining the spikes, which were about the size of a large lead-pencil, about three or four inches long, and barbed all along the sides, so that they looked not unlike rye beards under a microscope. These spikes are placed not at the end of the tail, but near the middle.

"Are sting rays good to eat?" asked Jack, examining the slimy, flabby creature.

"It all depends upon the taste of the eater," replied Ned. "The negroes sometimes eat the flaps or wings, and most white people on the coast have curiosity enough to taste them. They always say there's nothing bad about the taste, but I never knew anybody to take to sting rays as a delicacy. Some people say that alligator steaks are good, and a good many people eat sharks now and then. For my part good fish are too plentiful here for me to experiment with bad ones."

The fishing was resumed now, and it was not long before Jack confessed that the fish were beginning to "bother" him by their abundance and eagerness.

"Ned," he said, "I apologize. If you've any fiddlers about your clothes, I believe I'll confine my attention to sheephead; I'm tired of pulling fish in."

"Well, let's go ashore, then," said Ned, laughing, "and have dinner."

"Do fish bite in that way generally down here?" asked Charley.

"Yes, when the tide isn't too full. Fishing really gets to be a bore here, it is so easy to fill a boat; anybody can do that as easily as throw a cast net."

"Now hush that," said Charley. "Jack has owned up and apologized, and agreed that he knows more than he did this morning."

CHAPTER IV

PLANS AND PREPARATIONS

After dinner the boys lolled upon the piazza, and Ned answered his companions' questions concerning Bluffton and region round about.

"The water here is called South May River," he said, "but why, I don't know. It certainly isn't a river. This whole coast is a ragged edge of land with all sorts of inlets running up into it, and with islands, big and little, dotted about off the mainland. Yonder is Hilton Head away over near the horizon. Hunting Island lies off to the left, and Bear's Island further away yet. The little marsh islands have no names. They are simply bars of mud on which a kind of rank grass, called salt marsh, grows. Some of them are covered by every tide; others only by spring-tides, while others are covered by all except neap-tides."

"Is there any land over that way, to the right of Hilton Head?" Charley asked.

"Good idea!" exclaimed Ned. "I say, let's go buffalo-hunting and crusoeing and yachting all at once."

"What sort of answer is that nonsense to my question?" asked Charley, with mock dignity and real doubt as to his friend's meaning.

"Well, I jumped a little, that's all," said Ned. "Your question suggested my answer. Bee Island lies over there, out of sight. It's my uncle's land. It used to be a sea-island plantation, but was abandoned during the war and has never been occupied since. It has grown up and is as wild as if it had never been cultivated at all. The cattle were left on it when the place was abandoned, and they went completely wild. During the war parties of soldiers from both sides used to go over there to hunt the wild cattle. Sometimes they met each other and hunted each other instead of the cattle. Now it just occurred to me that we might have jolly fun by fitting out an expedition, sailing over there in the Red Bird– you see these land-locked waters are never very rough or dangerous – and camping there as long as we like. When we are in the boat, we will be yachtsmen of the 'swellest' sort; when we're on the desert island – or deserted, rather, for it is desert only in the past tense – we'll be Robinson Crusoes; and when we want beef we'll kill a wild cow, if there are any left, and be buffalo hunters, for what's a buffalo but a sort of wild cow?"

"Is the fishing good over there?" asked Jack, "for I'm not so much bothered by the fish yet that I want to quit catching them."

"As good as here."

"All right, let's go," said Jack.

"So say I," responded Charley. "When shall we start?"

"To-morrow morning. It will take all this afternoon to get ready," said Ned.

With that they set to work collecting necessary materials.

"We must have all sorts of things," said Ned.

"Yes," answered Jack, "particularly in our characters as Robinson Crusoes."

"How's that?" asked Charley. "He had nothing. He was shipwrecked, you know."

"Yes, I know. But did you never notice what extraordinary luck he had? Absolutely every thing that was indispensable to him came ashore or was brought ashore from that accommodating wreck. Why, he even got gunpowder enough to last him, and whatever the ship didn't yield the island did. I always suspected that Robinson Crusoe loaded that ship himself with special reference to his needs on the island, and picked out the right island, and then ran the ship on the rocks purposely."

This interpretation of Robinson Crusoe's character and life was a novel one to Jack's companions; but their plan for their expedition did not include any purpose to deny themselves needed conveniences.

The large duck gun was taken down from its hooks in the hall, and a good supply of ammunition was put into the shot pouches and powder flask. This included one pouch of buckshot and one of smaller shot for fowls. The fishing tackle was already in the boat house, as we know. An axe, a hatchet, a piece of bacon, to be used in frying fish, a small bag of rice, another of flour, and another of sweet potatoes, a box of salt, another of sugar – both water-tight, – and some coffee, completed the list of stores as planned by the boys. Maum Sally contemplated the collection, after the boys had declared it to be complete, and exclaimed;

"Well, I 'clar now!"

"What's the matter, Maum Sally?" asked Ned.

"Nothin', on'y it's jis zacly like a passel o' boys, dat is."

"What is?"

"W'y wot for is you a takin' things to eat?" asked Sally.

"Because we'll want to eat them," said Ned.

"Raw?" asked Sally.

"That's so," said Ned, with a look of confusion. "Boys, we haven't put in a single cooking utensil!"

Laughing at their blunder, the boys set about choosing from Maum Sally's stores what they thought was most imperatively needed. Two skillets, one to be used for frying and the other for baking bread; a kettle, to be used in boiling rice, in heating water for coffee, and as a bread pan in which to mix corn bread; a coffee pot; some tin cups; three forks and three plates, constituted their outfit.

Each boy had his pocket knife, of course, and Ned had put into the boat a large hunting knife from the house.

When all was stored ready for the morning's departure, the boys ate their supper and betook themselves to the piazza.

"I hope there'll be a fair breeze in the morning," said Ned, "for it will be a frightful job to row that big boat to Bee Island if there isn't wind enough to sail."

"How far is it?" asked Jack.

"About a dozen miles. But there is nearly always, breeze enough to sail, after we get away from the bluffs here; but the tide will be against us."

"How do you know?" asked Charley.

"Why it will begin running up about eight o'clock to-morrow, and of course it won't turn till about two."

"How do you know it will begin running up about eight o'clock?"

"Why, because it began running up a little after seven this morning."

"Well, what has that got to do with it? Don't it all depend on the wind?"

"What a landlubber you are!" exclaimed Ned. "No, it don't depend on the wind. It depends on the moon and the sun. I'll try to explain."

"No, don't," said Jack; "let him read about it in his geography, or explain it to him some other time. Tell us about something else now. Isn't the country fever likely to bother us over there on the island?"

"No, not if we select a good place to camp in. We must get on pretty high ground near the salt water. I know the look of healthy and unhealthy places pretty well, and we'll be safe enough."

"All right. When we get into camp you can deliver that lecture on tides if you want to, but just now we wouldn't attend to it. We're apt to be a trifle cross in the evenings over there if we get tired. Tired people in camp are always cross, and it will be just as well to save whatever you have to say till we need something to talk about. Then you can tell us all about it."

"Well, now, I've something interesting to tell you without waiting," said Ned; "something very interesting."

"What is it?"

"That it is after nine o'clock; that we want to get up early; and that we'd better go to bed."

"Agreed," said his companions.

CHAPTER V

THE SAILING OF THE "RED BIRD."

The boys were out of bed not long after daylight the next morning. The sky was clear, but there was not a particle of breeze, and even before the sun rose the air was hot and stifling to a degree never before experienced by either of Ned's visitors.

"I say, Ned, this is a frightful morning," said Jack. "I feel myself melting as I stand here in my clothes. I'm already as weak as a pound of butter looks in the sun. How we're going to breathe when the sun comes up, I'm at a loss to determine. Whew!" and with that Jack sat down exhausted.

"A nice time we'll have rowing," said Charley. "I move we swim and push the boat. It'll be cooler, and not much harder work. Does it ever rain here? because if it does I'm waiting for a shower. I'm wilted down, and nothing short of a drenching will revive me."

"Well," said Ned, "come, let's take a drenching. I'm going to take a header off the boat-house pier. It's low-water now, and there's a clear jump of ten feet. A plunge will wake us up, and by that time breakfast will be ready, and what is more to the point, the tide will turn. That's a comfort."

"Why?" asked Charley.

"Because when it turns a sea-breeze will come with it. This sort of heat is what we'd have here all summer long if it wasn't for land- and sea-breezes. As it is we never have it except at dead low water, and it is always followed by a good stiff sea-breeze when the tide turns. We'll be able to sail instead of swimming over to the island. But come, let's have our plunge now."

After breakfast the boys went to the boat house to bestow their freight in the boat. The tide had turned, and, as Ned had predicted, a cool, stimulating breeze had begun to blow, so that the strength returned to Jack's knees and Charley's resolution.

"It will be best to fill the boat's water kegs," said Ned; "partly because we'll want water on the way, partly because we'll want water on the island, while we're digging for a permanent supply."

"By the way," said Jack, "what are we going to dig with?"

"Well, there's another blunder," said Ned. "If Robinson Crusoe had forgotten things in that way, he never would have lived through his island experiences. We must have a shovel and a pick. I'll run up to the house and look for them while you boys fill the water kegs."

When Ned got back to the boat he was confronted by Maum Sally with a big bundle.

"What is it, Maum Sally?"

"Oh nothin', on'y I spose you young gentlemen is a gwine to sleep jes a little now an' then o' nights, an' so, as you hasn't thought on it yerse'fs, I's done brung you some bedclo'es."

"Now look here, boys," said Ned; "we'll go off without our heads yet. We've lost our heads several times already, in fact. There's nothing for it except just to imagine ourselves at the island, and run through a whole day and night in our minds to see what we're going to need."

"That's a good idea," said Charley. "I'll begin. I'll need my mother the first thing, because here's a button off my collar."

The party laughed, of course, but there was force in the suggestion. A few buttons, a needle or two, and some stout thread were straightway added to the ship's stores.

"Now let's see," said Ned. "We'll need to build a shelter first thing, and we've all the tools necessary for that, because I've thought it out carefully. Then we have our digging tools. Very well. Now, for breakfast we need, let me see," and he ran over the materials and utensils already enumerated. Going on in this way through an imaginary day on the island, the boys found their list of stores now reasonably complete. From Maum Sally's bundle they selected three blankets, which they rolled up tight and bestowed behind the water keg at the stern. Maum Sally had brought pillows, sheets, and a large mattress, which she earnestly besought them to take, but they declined to add to their cargo any thing which could be dispensed with. At the very last moment one of the boys thought of matches. It was decided that three small boxes would be sufficient, as they could keep fire by the exercise of a little caution.

Thus equipped, they bade Maum Sally good-by, and cast the boat loose. The sail filled, the Red Bird lay a little over upon one side, with the wind nearly abeam, and the boys settled themselves into their places.

"I say, young Ned," called Maum Sally, "how long's ye mean to be gone?"

"Oh, I don't know. May be a month," was the reply.

"Well, not a day longer 'n dat, now mind."

CHAPTER VI

ODD FISH

The sea-breeze was fresh and full, and it blew from a favorable quarter. There were various windings about among the small islands to be made, and now and then the course for a brief distance was against the wind, and as this was the case only where the channel was narrow, it was necessary to make a series of very short "tacks," which gave Ned an opportunity to instruct his companions in the art of sailing a boat. In the main, however, there was an abundance of sea-room, and Ned could lay his course directly for Bee Island and keep the wind on the quarter. It was barely eleven o'clock, therefore, when the Red Bird came to her moorings on the island, and the boys went ashore.

"Now the first thing that Robinson Crusoe did after he got his wits about him," said Jack, "was to build his residence. Let's follow the example of that experienced mariner, and choose our building-site before we begin to bring away things from the wreck; I mean, before we unload our plunder."

"Yes, that's our best plan," said Ned. "We don't want to do any more carrying than we must. Let me see. We're on the north side of the island. If I remember right, the negro quarters used to be to the east of this spot, and the negroes must have got water from somewhere, so we'd better look for the ruins of that African Troy, in search of the ancient reservoirs."

"How far from the shore were the quarters?" asked Charley.

"I don't remember, if I ever knew; but why?"

"Well, it seems to me this island has grown up somewhat as the hair on your head does, in a shock. The large trees, as nearly as I can make out, think six feet or so to be a proper interval between themselves, and the small trees have disposed themselves to the best of their ability between the big ones; then all kinds of vines have grown up among the big and little trees, as if to make a sort of shrimp-net of the woods, and cane has grown up just to occupy any vacant spaces that might be left. It occurs to me that if we're to hunt anywhere except along shore for the old quarters, we'd best make up our minds to clear the island as we go."

"I say, Charley," said Jack, "if you were obliged to clear an acre of this growth with your own hands what would you do first?"

"I'd get a good axe, a grubbing hoe, some matches, and kindling wood; then I'd take a good look at the thicket; and then I'd take a long, long rest."

"Yes, I suppose you'd need it. But that isn't what I meant. Never mind that, however. Ned, I don't see why this isn't as good a place as any for our camp. There's a sort of bluff here, and we can clear away a place for our hut and get the hut built with less labor than it would take to find traces of negro quarters that were destroyed twelve or fifteen years ago."

"Yes, but how about water?"

"Well, I don't think it likely that we'd find any visible remains of a well in the other place, and if we did we'd have to dig it all out again. Why not dig here?"

After some discussion, and the examination of the shore for a short distance in each direction, this suggestion was adopted. The building of a shelter was easy work. It was necessary only to erect a framework of poles, to cut bushes and place them against the sides for walls, and to cover the whole with palmete leaves – that is to say, with the leaves of a species of dwarf palm which grows in that region in abundance. These leaves are known to persons at the North only in the form of palm-leaf fans. On the coast of South Carolina they grow in all the swamps and woodlands.

A little labor made a bunk for the boys to sleep upon, and while Ned and Charley filled it with long gray Spanish moss, Jack got dinner ready, first rowing out from shore and catching fish enough for that meal while his companions finished the house.

"Now," said Jack, when dinner was over and the boys had stretched themselves out for a rest, "it's nearly sunset, and we're all tired. We've got the best part of two kegs of water left, so I move that we don't begin digging our well till morning."

"Agreed," said the other boys, glad enough to be idle.

"Now, I've got something I want you to tell me about," said Jack. "Two things, in fact." With that, he went to the boat and looked about. Presently he came back and said:

"One of 'em's dried up. Here's the other."

He handed Ned a queer-looking fish, almost black, about eight inches long, very slender, and very singularly shaped.

"See," he said; "its jaw protrudes in so queer a way that I can't make out which side of the creature is top and which bottom. Turn either side you please up, and it looks as if you ought to turn the other up instead; and then the thing has a sort of match-lighter on top of his head, or on the bottom – I don't know which it is. Look."

He pointed to the creature's head. There was a flat, oval figure there, made by a ridge in the skin, and the flat space enclosed within this oval line was crossed diagonally by other ridges, arranged with perfect regularity. The whole looked something like the figure on the opposite page.

"Now, what I want to know," said Jack, "is what sort of fish this is, which side of him belongs on top, and what use he makes of this match-lighter."

"I'm afraid I can't help you much," said Ned. "A year ago I would have told you at once that the fish is a shark's pilot, so called because he follows ships as sharks do, and the sailors think he acts as a pilot for the sharks. But now I don't know what to call it."

"Why not?" asked Charley.

"Because I don't know. I've been reading up in the cyclopædias and natural histories and ichthyologies about our fishes down here, and have found out that whatever I know isn't so."

"Why, how's that?"

"Well, take the whiting, for example. When I began reading up to see if there was any sort of cousinship between him and the dolphin, I soon found that the whiting isn't a whiting at all, but I couldn't find out any thing else about him. The whiting described in the books is a sort of codfish's cousin, and he lives only at the North. Neither the pictures nor the descriptions of him at all resemble our whiting, so I don't know what sort of fish our whiting is. I only know that he isn't a whiting, and isn't the remotest relation to the dolphin, because he is a fish and has scales, while the dolphin is a cetacean."

"What's a cetacean?" asked Charley.

"A vertebrated, mammiferous marine animal."

"Well; go on; English all that."

"Well, whales, dolphins narwhals, and porpoises are the principal cetaceans. They are not fish, but marine animals, and they suckle their young."

"Well, that's news to me," said Charley.

"Now, then," said Jack, "if you two have finished your little side discussion, suppose we come back to the subject in hand. What do you know, Ned, about this fish that I have in my hand, and why don't you call him a shark's pilot now, as you say you did a year ago?"

"Why, because the books treat me the same way in his case that they do in the whiting's. They describe a shark's pilot which is as different from this as a whale is from a heifer calf, and so I don't know what to call this fellow. Did he make a fight when you caught him?"

"Indeed he did. I was sure I had a twenty-pound something or other on my hook, and when I pulled up this insignificant little creature, with the match box on his head, I was disgusted. I looked at him to see if he hadn't a steam-engine somewhere about him, because he pulled so hard, and that's what made me observe his match box and his curious up-side-down-itiveness."

"I say, Ned," said Charley, "why is it that our Southern fishes are so neglected in the books?"

"Well, I've asked myself that question, and the only answer I can think of is this: in the first place, there is no great commercial interest in fishing here as there is at the North; and then the natural history books and the cyclopædias are all written at the North or in Europe, and so there are thousands of curious fish down here which are not mentioned. There's the pin-cushion fish, for example. I can't find a trace of that curious creature in any of the books."

"What sort of thing is a pin-cushion fish?" asked Jack.

"He's simply a hollow sphere, a globular bag about twice the size of a walnut, and as round as a base ball."

"Half transparent, is he? Red, shaded off into white? with water inside of him, and pimples, like pin-heads, all over him, and eyes and mouth right on his fair rotundity, making him look like a picture of the full moon made into a human face?" asked Jack eagerly.

"Yes, that's the pin-cushion fish."

"I thought so. That's my other one," said Jack.

"What do you mean?" asked Ned.

"Why, that's the other thing I had to show you, but couldn't find. I caught him with the cast net."