CHAPTER V.
THE GREAT FLORIDA REEF.
THE great Florida Reef, up which our young canoemates had
just started on their adventurous cruise, is about 230 miles long. It
extends from Cape Florida, on the Atlantic coast, completely around the
southern end of the peninsula, and far out into the Gulf of Mexico on
the west. The island of Key West lies some 70 miles off the mainland,
and about the same distance from the Dry Tortugas, which group of
little coral islets forms the western extremity of the reef. Between
Key West, on which is a city of the same name containing nearly 20,000
inhabitants, who live farther south than any one else in the United
States, and Cape Florida, 150 miles east and north, a multitude of
little keys or islands, covered to the water's edge with a dense growth
of mangroves and other tropical trees and shrubs, stretch in a
continuous line. Between these keys* and the mainland lies a vast
shallow expanse of water known as the Bay of Florida. Outside of them
is the narrow and navigable Hawk Channel, running along their entire
length, and bounded on its seaward side by the almost unbroken wall of
the outer reef. This rarely rises above the surface, and on it the busy
coral insects pursue their ceaseless toil of rock-building. Beyond the
reef, between it and the island of Cuba, eighty miles away, pours the
mighty flood of the Gulf Stream.
* The word "key" is a corruption of the Spanish Cayo or
island. Thus Key West was originally "Cayo Hueso," or Bone Island, so
called from the quantity of human bones found on it by the first white
settlers.
For nearly 300 years these peaceful looking keys, with
their bewildering network of channels, kept open by the rushing tide
currents, and coral reefs were the chosen resorts of pirates and
wreckers, both of whom reaped rich rewards from the unfortunate vessels
that fell into their hands. Now the pirates have disappeared, and the
business of the wreckers has been largely taken from them by the
establishment of a range of lighthouses along the outer reef, at
intervals of twenty to thirty miles. The first of these is on
Loggerhead Key, the outermost of the Tortugas. Then comes Rebecca
Shoal, halfway between Loggerhead and Sand Key Light, which is just off
Key West. From here the lights in order up the reef are American Shoal,
Sombrero, Alligator, Carysfort, and Fowey Rocks, off Cape Florida.
With this chain of flashing beacons to warn mariners of
the presence of the dreaded reef, the palmy days of wreckers and
beachcombers have passed away, and they must content themselves with
what they can make out of the occasional vessels that are still drawn
in to the reef by the powerful currents ever setting towards' it.
Consequently most of those who would otherwise be wreckers have turned
their attention to sponging in the waters behind the keys, which form
one of the great spongefields of the world, or to the raising of
pineapples and coconuts on such of the islands as afford sufficient
soil for this purpose.
There are four ways by which one may sail up the reef. The
first is outside in the Gulf Stream, or by "way of the Gulf"; the
second is between the reef and the keys, through the Hawk Channel; the
third is through the narrow and intricate channels among the keys, or
"inside," as the spongers say; and the fourth is the "bay way," or
through the shoal waters behind the keys.
Of all these, the third, or inside way, was the one chosen
by Sumner as being the most protected from wind and seas, the most
picturesque, the one affording the most frequent opportunities for
landing, the most interesting, and in every way best adapted to canoes
drawing but a few inches of water.
As the Psyche and Cupid are running easily
along the north shore of the key before a light southerly breeze, there
is time to take a look at the "duffle" with which they are laden. In
the first place, each has two lateen sails, the long yards of which are
hoisted on short masts rising but a few feet from the deck. These sails
can be hoisted, lowered, or quickly reefed by the canoeman from where
he sits. The two halves of the double-bladed paddles are held in metal
clips on deck, on either side of the cockpit. Also on deck, securely
fastened, is a small folding anchor, the light but strong five-fathom
cable of which runs through a ring at the bow, and back to a cleat just
inside the forward end of the coaming.
On the floor of each canoe is folded a small tent made of
gay-striped awning cloth, and provided with mosquito nettings at the
openings. Above these are laid the pair of heavy Mackinaw blankets and
the rubber poncho that each carries. These, which will be shelter and
bedding at night, answer for seats while sailing.
Under the deck, at one side of each cockpit, hangs a
double barreled shotgun; and on the other Bide are half a dozen tiny
lockers, in which are stowed a few simple medicines, fishing tackle,
matches, an alcohol lamp (flamme forcé), loaded shells for the
guns, etc. In the after stowage lockers are extra clothing and toilet
articles. The Psyche carries the mess chest, containing a
limited supply of tableware, sugar, coffee, tea, baking powder, salt,
pepper, etc., and a light axe, both of which are stowed at the forward
end of the cockpit. The Cupid carries in the same place a
two-gallon water keg and a small, but well-furnished tool chest. The
provisions, of which bacon, flour, oatmeal, sea biscuit, a few cans of
baked beans and brown bread, dried apples, syrup, cocoa, condensed
milk, corn meal, rice, and hominy form the staples, and the few
necessary cooking utensils, which are made to fit within one another,
are evenly divided between the two canoes and stowed under the forward
hatches. By Sumner's advice, many things that the Mantons brought with
them have been left behind, and everything taken along has been reduced
to its smallest possible compass. Besides the shotgun that Mr. Manton
had given him as part of the Psyche's outfit, Sumner was armed
with a revolver that had been his father's.
Late in the afternoon they passed the eastern point of the
island of Key West, and crossing a broad open space, in the shoal
waters of which, but for Sumner's intimate knowledge of the place, even
their light canoes would have run aground a dozen times, they
approached the coconut groves of Boca Chica, a large key on which they
proposed to make their first camp.
The western sky was in a glory of flame as they hauled
their craft ashore, and from the tinted waters myriads of fish were
leaping in all directions, as though intoxicated by the splendor of the
scene.
"We will catch some of those fine fellows a little later,"
said Sumner, as they began to unload their canoes and carry the things
to the spot they had already chosen for a camp.
"But it will be dark," protested Worth.
"So much the better. It's ever so much easier to catch
fish in the dark than by daylight."
There was plenty of driftwood on the beach, and in a few
minutes the merry blaze of their campfire was leaping from a pile of
it. While waiting for it to burn down to a bed of coals, each of them
drove a couple of stout stakes, and pitched their canoe tents near a
clump of tall palms, just back of the fire, looped up the side
openings, and spread their blankets beneath them.
"Now let's fly round and get supper," cried Sumner, "for I
am as hungry as a kingfish.
You put the coffee water on to boil, while I cut some
slices of bacon, Worth, and then I'll scramble some eggs, too, for we
might as well eat them while they are fresh."
With his back turned to the fire, the former did not
notice what Worth was doing, until a hissing sound, accompanied by a
cry of dismay, caused him to look round.
"I never saw such a miserable kettle as that!" exclaimed
Worth. "lust look; it has fallen all to pieces."
For a moment Sumner could not imagine what had caused such
a catastrophe. Then he exclaimed: "I do believe you must have set the
kettle on the coals before you put the water into it."
"Of course I did," answered Worth, "so as to let it get
hot. And the minute I began to pour water into it, it went all to
pieces."
"Experience comes high," said Sumner, "especially when it
costs us the loss of our best kettle; but we've got to have it at any
price, and I don't believe you'll ever set a kettle on the fire again
without first putting water or some other liquid inside of it."
"No, I don't believe I will," answered Worth, ruefully,
"if that is what happens."
In spite of this mishap, the supper was successfully
cooked, thanks to Sumner's culinary knowledge, and by the time it was
over and the dishes had been washed, he pronounced it dark enough to go
fishing. First he cut a quantity of slivers from a piece of pitch pine
drift wood, then, having emptied one of the canoes of its contents, he
invited Worth to enter it with him.
"But we haven't a single fish line ready," protested Worth.
"Oh yes, we have," laughed Sumner, lighting one end of the
bundle of pine slivers, and giving it to Worth to hold. "You just sit
still and hold that. You'll find out what sort of a fish line it is in
a minute. Then he paddled the canoe very gently a few rods off shore,
at the same time bearing down on one gunwale until it was even with the
surface of the water. "Look out, here they come!" he shouted.
TORCH-FISHING FOR MULLET.
CHAPTER VI.
PINEAPPLES AND SPONGES.
THE next instant Worth uttered a startled cry and very
nearly dropped his torch, as a mullet, leaping from the water, struck
him on the side of the head, and fell flapping into the canoe.
"Never mind a little thing like that," cried Sumner. "Hold
your torch a trifle lower. That's the kind!" Now the mullet came thick
and fast, attracted to the bright light like moths to a candle flame.
They leaped into the canoe and over it, they fell on its decks and
flopped off into the water, they struck the two boys until they felt as
though they were being pelted with wet snowballs; and at length one of
them, hitting the torch, knocked it from Worth's hand, so that it fell
hissing into the water.
The effect of this sudden extinguishing of the light was
startling. In an instant the fish ceased to jump, and disappeared,
while the recent noisy confusion was succeeded by an intense stillness,
Only broken by an occasional flap from one of the victims to curiosity
that had fallen into the canoe.
"Well, that is the easiest way of fishing I ever heard
of," remarked Worth, as they stepped ashore, and turning the canoe
over, spilled out fifty or more fine mullet. A dozen of them were
cleaned, rubbed with salt, and put away for breakfast. Then the tired
canoemates turned in for their first night's sleep in camp.
Sumner's eyes were quickly closed, but Worth found his
surroundings so novel that for a long time he lay dreamily awake
watching the play of moonlight on the rippling water, listening to the
splash of jumping fish, the music of little waves on the shell-strewn
beach, and the ceaseless rustle of the great palm leaves above him. At
length his wakefulness merged into dreams, and when he next opened his
eyes it was broad daylight, the sun had just risen, and Sumner was
building a fire.
"Hurrah, Worth! Tumble out of bed and tumble into the
water," he called at that moment. "There's just time for a dip in the
briny before this fire '11 be ready for those fish." Suiting his
actions to his words, he began pulling off his clothes, and a minute
later the two boys were diving into the cool water like a couple of
frisky young porpoises.
Oatmeal and syrup, fresh mullet, bread-and-butter (which
they had brought from home), and coffee, formed a breakfast that Sumner
declared fit for a railroad king.
The sun was not more than an hour high before they were
again under way, this time working hard at their paddles, as the breeze
had not yet sprung up. Having left their first camp behind them, they
felt that their long cruise had indeed begun in earnest.
For the next three days they threaded their way, under
sail or paddle, among such numberless keys and through such a maze of
narrow channels, that it seemed to Worth as though they were entangled
in a labyrinth from which they would never be able to extricate
themselves. Whenever a long sand spit or reef shot out from the north
side of one key, a similar obstruction was certain to be found on the
south end of the next one. Thus their course was a perpetual zigzag,
and a fair wind on one stretch would be dead ahead on the next. Now
they slid through channels so narrow that the dense mangroves on either
side brushed their decks, and then they would be confronted by a coral
reef that seemed to extend unbrokenly in both directions as far as the
eye could reach. Worth would make up his mind that there was nothing to
do hut get out and drag the canoes over it, when suddenly the Psyche,
which
was always in the lead, would dash directly at the obstacle, and
skim through one of the narrow cuts with which all these reefs abound.
For a long time it was a mystery to Worth how Sumner
always kept in the channel without hesitating or stopping to take
soundings. Finally he discovered that it was by carefully noting the
color of the water. He learned that white water meant shoals, that of a
reddish tinge indicated sandbars or reefs, black water showed rocks or
grassy patches, and that the channels assumed varying shades of green,
according to their depth.
They camped with Negro charcoal burners on one key, and
visited an extensive pineapple patch on another. Having heard this
fruit spoken of as growing on trees, Worth was amazed to find it borne
on plants with long prickly leaves that reached but little above his
knees. The plants stood so close together, and their leaves were so
interlaced, that he did not see how any one ever walked among them to
cut the single fruit borne at the head of each one; and when he tried
it' stepping high to avoid the bayonet-like leaves, his wonder that any
human being could traverse the patch was redoubled.
"I would just as soon try to walk through a field covered
with cactus plants," he said.
"So would I," laughed Sumner, "if I had to walk as you do.
In a pineapple patch you must never lift your feet, but always shuffle
along. In that way you force the prickly leaves before you, and move
with their grain instead of against it."
Although the crop would not be ready for cutting much
before May, they found here and there a lusciously ripe yellow "pine,"
and after eating one of these, Worth declared that he had never before
known what a pineapple was. He did not wonder that they tasted so
different here and in New York, when he learned that for shipment north
they must be cut at least two weeks before they are ripe, while they
are hard and comparatively juiceless.
At the end of three days an outgoing tide, rushing like a
millrace, swept the canoes through the green expanse of "The Grasses,"
that looked like a vast submerged meadow, and into the open waters of
the Bahia Honda, or, as the reefmen say, the "Bay o' Hundy." Here they
first saw spongers at work, and devoted an entire day to studying their
operations.
Worth had always supposed that sponges were dived for, but
now he learned his mistake. He found that in those waters they are torn
from the bottom and drawn to the surface by iron rakes with long curved
teeth attached to slender handles from twenty to thirty feet in length.
The sponging craft are small sloops or schooners, each of which tows
from two to six boats behind it. When a sponge bed is discovered, two
men go out in each of these boats. One of them sculls it gently along,
while the other leans over the gunwale with a water glass in his hands,
and carefully examines the bottom as he is moved slowly over it. The
water glass is a common wooden bucket having a glass bottom. This is
held over the side of the boat so that its bottom is a few inches below
the surface of the water, or beyond the disturbing influence of
ripples. With his head in this bucket, the sponger gazes intently down
until he sees the round black object that he wants. Then he calls out
to the sculler to stop the boat, and with the long-handled rake that
lies by his side secures the prize. It is black and slimy, and full of
animal matter that quickly dies, and decomposes with a most disgusting
odor. To this the spongers become so accustomed that they do not mind
it in the least, and fail to understand why all strangers take such
pains to sail to windward of their boats.
When the deck of a sponge boat is piled high with this
unsavory spoil of the sea, she is headed towards the nearest key on
which her crew have established a crawl,* and her cargo is tossed into
it. The crawl is a square pen of stakes built in the shallow water of
some sheltered bay, and in it the sponges lie until their animal matter
is so decomposed that it will readily separate from them. Then they are
stirred with poles or trodden by the feet of the spongers until they
are free from it, when they are taken from the crawl, and spread on a
beach to dry and whiten in the sun. When a full cargo has been
obtained, they are strung in bunches, and taken to Key West to be sold
by the pound at auction. There they are trimmed, bleached again,
pressed into bales, and finally shipped to New York.
Sponges are of many grades, of which the sheep's wool is
the finest, and the great loggerheads the most worthless. As spongers
can only work in water that is smooth, or nearly so, half their time is
spent in idleness; and though they receive large prices for what they
catch, the average of their wages is low.
One hot afternoon at the end of a week found our
canoemates halfway up the reef, and approaching a key called Lignum
Vitae which is for several reasons one of the most remarkable of all
the keys. It is a large island lifted higher above the surface of the
water than any of the other keys, and it contains in its center a small
freshwater lake. It is covered with all almost impenetrable forest
growth, and concealed by this are ancient stone walls; of which no one
knows the origin or date.
* Crawl is a corruption of corral, meaning a yard or pen.
Sumner had told Worth so much concerning this key as to
arouse his curiosity, and they both looked forward with interest to
reaching it. All day they had seen it looming before them, and when
they finally dropped sail close beside it, Worth proposed that they
take advantage of the remaining daylight to make a short exploration
before unloading their canoes and pitching camp. To this Sumner agreed,
and as they could not drag the laden boats up over the rocky beach,
they decided to anchor them out and wade ashore. So the Psyche's
anchor
was flung out into the channel, the Cupid was made fast
to her, and a light line from its stern was carried ashore and tied to
a tree. Then, taking their guns with them, the boys plunged into the
forest.
When, an hour later, they returned from their exploration,
bringing with them a brace of ducks and half a dozen doves that they
had shot, they gazed about them in bewildered dismay. The canoes were
not where they had left them, nor could any trace of them be discovered.
THE CANOES ARE GONE.