Where we went I do not know even now: saw-gra.s.s and water, hammock and sh.e.l.l mound, palm forests, swamps, wildernesses of water-oak and live-oak, vast stretches of pine, lagoons, sloughs, branches, muddy creeks, reedy reaches from which wild fowl rose in clouds where alligators lurked or lumbered about after stranded fish, horrible mangrove thickets full of moccasins and water-turkeys, heronry more horrible still, out of which the heat from a vertical sun distilled the last atom of nauseating effluvia--all these choice spots we visited under the guidance of the wretched Mink. I seemed to be missing nothing that might discourage or disgust me.
He appeared to know the way, somehow, although my compa.s.s became mysteriously lost the first day out from Fort Coquina.
Again and again I felt instinctively that we were travelling in a vast circle, but Mink always denied it, and I had no scientific instruments to verify my deepening suspicions.
Another thing bothered me: Mink did not seem to suffer from insects or heat; in fact, to my intense annoyance, he appeared to be having a comfortable time of it, eating and drinking with gusto, sleeping snugly under a mosquito bar, permitting me to do all camp work, the paddling as long as we used a canoe, and all the cooking, too, claiming, on his part, a complete ignorance of culinary art.
Sometimes he condescended to catch a few fish for the common pan; sometimes he bestirred himself to shoot a duck or two. But usually he played on his concertina during his leisure moments which were plentiful.
I began to detest Samuel Mink.
At first I was murderously suspicious of him, and I walked about with my automatic a.r.s.enal ostentatiously displayed. But he looked like such a miserable little shrimp that I became ashamed of my precautions. Besides, as he cheerfully pointed out, a little koonti soaked in my drinking water, would have done my business for me if he had meant me any physical harm. Also he had a horrid habit of noosing moccasins for sport; and it would have been easy for him to introduce one to me while I slept.
Really what most worried me was the feeling which I could not throw off that somehow or other we were making very little progress in any particular direction.
He even admitted that there was reason for my doubts, but he confided to me that to find these Coquina hills, was like traversing a maze. Doubling to and fro among forests and swamps, he insisted, was the only possible path of access to the undiscovered Coquina hills of Florida. Otherwise, he argued, these Coquina hills would long ago have been discovered.
And it seemed to me that he had been right when at last we came out on the edge of a palm forest and beheld that astounding blue outline of hills in a country which has always been supposed to lie as flat as a flabby flap-jack.
A desert of saw-palmetto stretched away before us to the base of the hills; game trails ran through it in every direction like sheep paths; a few moth-eaten Florida deer trotted away as we appeared.
Into one of these trails stepped Samuel Mink, burdened only with his concertina and a box of cigars. I, loaded with seventy pounds of impedimenta including a moving-picture apparatus, reeled after him.
He walked on jauntily toward the hills, his pearl-coloured bowler hat at an angle. Occasionally he played upon his concertina as he advanced; now and then he cut a pigeon wing. I hated him. At every toilsome step I hated him more deeply. He played "Tipperary" on his concertina.
"See "em, old top?" he inquired, nodding toward the hills. "I"m a man of my word, I am. Look at "em! Take "em in, old sport! An" reemember, each an" every hill is guaranteed to contain one bony fidy cave-lady what is the last vanishin" traces of a extinc" an" dissappeerin" race!"
We toiled on--that is, I did, bowed under my sweating load of paraphernalia. He skipped in advance like some degenerate twentieth century faun, playing on his pipes the unmitigated melodies of George Cohan.
"Watch your step!" he cried, nimbly avoiding the attentions of a ground-rattler which tried to caress his ankle from under a saw-palmetto.
With a shudder I gave the deadly little reptile room and floundered forward a prey to exhaustion, melancholy, and red-bugs. A few buzzards kept pace with me, their broad, black shadows gliding ominously over the sun-drenched earth; blue-tail lizards went rustling and leaping away on every side; floppy soft-winged b.u.t.terflies escorted me; a strange bird which seemed to be dressed in a union suit of checked gingham, flew from tree to tree as I plodded on, and squealed at me persistently.
At last I felt the hard coquina under foot; the cool blue shadow of the hills enveloped me; I slipped off my pack, dumped it beside a little rill of crystal water which ran sparkling from the hills, and sat down on a soft and fragrant carpet of hound"s-tongue.
After a while I drank my fill at the rill, bathed head, neck, face and arms, and, feeling delightfully refreshed, leaned back against the fern-covered slab of coquina.
"What are you doing?" I demanded of Mink who was unpacking the kit and disengaging the moving-picture machine.
"Gettin" ready," he replied, fussing busily with the camera.
"You don"t expect to see any cave people here, do you?" I asked with a thrill of reviving excitement.
"Why not?"
"_Here_?"
"Cert"nly. Why the first one I seen was a-drinkin" into this brook."
"Here! Where I"m sitting?" I asked incredulously.
"Yes, sir, right there. It was this way; I was lyin" down, tryin" to figure the shortes" way to Fort Coquina, an" wishin" I was nearer Broadway than I was to the Equator, when I heard a voice say, "Blub-blub, muck-a-muck!" an" then I seen two cave-ladies come sof"ly stealin"
along."
"W-where?"
"Right there where you are a-sittin". Say, they was lookers! An" they come along quiet like two big-eyed deer, kinder nosin" the air and listenin".
""Gee whiz," thinks I, "Longacre ain"t got so much on them dames!" An" at that one o" them wore a wild-cat"s skin an" that"s all--an" a wild-cat ain"t big. And t"other she sported pa"m-leaf pyjamas.
"So when they don"t see nothin" around to hinder, they just lays down flat and takes a drink into that pool, lookin" up every swallow like little birds listenin" and kinder thankin" G.o.d for a good square drink.
"I knowed they was wild girls soon as I seen "em. Also they sez to one another, "Blub-blub!" Kinder sof"ly. All the same I"ve seen wilder ladies on Broadway so I took a chanst where I was squattin" behind a rock.
"So sez I, "Ah there, sweetie Blub-blub! Have a taxi on me!" An" with that they is on their feet, quiverin" all over an" nosin" the wind. So first I took some snapshots at "em with my Bijoo camera.
"I guess they scented me all right for I seen their eyes grow bigger, an"
then they give a bound an" was off over the rocks; an" me after "em. Say, that was some steeple-chase until a few more cave-ladies come out on them rocks above us an" hove chunks of coquina at me.
"An" with all that dodgin" an" duckin" of them there rocks the cave-girls got away; an" I seen "em an" the other cave-ladies scurryin" into little caves--one whisked into this hole, another scuttled into that--bing! all over!
"All I could think of was to light a cigar an" blow the smoke in after the best-lookin" cave-girl. But I couldn"t smoke her out, an" I hadn"t time to starve her out. So that"s all I know about this here pree-historic an" extinc" race o" vanishin" cave-ladies."
As his simple and illiterate narrative advanced I became proportionally excited; and, when he ended, I sprang to my feet in an uncontrollable access of scientific enthusiasm:
"Was she really pretty?" I asked.
"Listen, she was that peachy--"
"Enough!" I cried. "Science expects every man to do his duty! Are your films ready to record a scene without precedent in the scientific annals of creation?"
"They sure is!"
"Then place your camera and your person in a strategic position. This is a magnificent spot for an ambush! Come over beside me!"
He came across to where I had taken cover among the ferns behind the parapet of coquina, and with a thrill of pardonable joy I watched him unlimber his photographic artillery and place it in battery where my every posture and action would be recorded for posterity if a cave-lady came down to the water-hole to drink.
"It were futile," I explained to him in a guarded voice, "for me to attempt to cajole her as you attempted it. Neither playful nor moral suasion could avail, for it is certain that no cave-lady understands English."
"I thought o" that, too," he remarked. "I said, "Blub-blub! muck-a-muck!"
to "em when they started to run, but it didn"t do no good."
I smiled: "Doubtless," said I, "the spoken language of the cave-dweller is made up of similarly primitive exclamations, and you were quite right in attempting to communicate with the cave-ladies and establish a cordial entente. Professor Garner has done so among the Simian population of Gaboon. Your attempt is most creditable and I shall make it part of my record.
"But the main idea is to capture a living specimen of cave-lady, and corroborate every detail of that pursuit and capture upon the films.
"And believe me, Mr. Mink," I added, my voice trembling with emotion, "no Academician is likely to go to sleep when I ill.u.s.trate my address with such pictures as you are now about to take!"
"The police might pull the show," he suggested.