Frank Lillie Pollock

“ Whippoorwills began to call; great moths and beetles flitted and hummed, and once he heard the screech of a wildcat far down by the river. It was windless and so hot and damp that the sweat stood on his face. It was a lucky thing, he thought, that his cousins had had no such weather on their recent camping trip. Unused to the climate, they would certainly have got a dose of malaria.
Joe found it hard to keep awake. He had been in the saddle since early morning; and as he crouched there with his eye on the thicket where the mysterious wheelbarrow lay he found himself dozing. ”

“ Dimly in the gloom they could see the pale outline of the rows of beehives, all full of good, straight, new combs and crowded with live bees—a valuable property which the boys had built up out of nothing.
“Those pirates are sure to be back within a day or two,” Joe went on. “They’ll see how we’ve looted the rosin, and then they’ll get us. But what are we to do? Can’t go off and desert the bee-ranch.”
“I should say not,” cried Bob, clenching his fists. “I won’t do that! We mustn’t be beaten now. Joe, we’ve just got to get these bees out of here right away, and down to the railroad!” ”

“ They began to feel faint from hunger, and while the white boys rowed they set Sam to troll a line over the stern for catfish. But he had no luck; he caught nothing. Another river reach still showed no trace of the raft. Opening into the river at frequent intervals were cross-channels, bayous, backwaters and creeks, screened with willow, curtained with bamboo-vine, misty with gray Spanish moss, but the boys kept to the main channel. Seven or eight miles went by. They rounded bend after bend, but sighted no larger living thing than a flock of wild ducks. ”

“ Beyond them lay the black houseboat, tied to a tree in the bayou, half-concealed by the streamers of vines and moss that swung from all the branches overhead. There was a little space of high and dry shore beside it, and two heavy planks ran as a gangway from the boat to the land. On the shore was a great iron kettle set up on stones, with dead ashes under it. Several barrels stood about; the ground was covered with lumps of rosin and rosin-soaked burlap cloths, and the smell was strong enough now. ”

“ The hard sand of the camp square was dry and firm already; the surrounding pines were a fresh-washed, vivid green. There were not many signs of the tempest visible here—only an unroofed cabin or two, a pine that had fallen right into the camp area, and the brook beside the road that flowed muddy and bank-full.
The routine of the camp was disorganized that morning. Negro women and children swarmed about the cabins, calling to one another; the chippers from the wrecked area loafed in the sun, smoking cigarettes, waiting for orders. Joe found Tom Morris near the still, talking with the foreman. ”

“ They debated for some minutes, and then started to find the old channel to make a fresh start. Sam started with a great deal of confidence, but within fifteen minutes they came to a slough of what seemed bottomless mud. Stiff-leaved palmetto grew on hard spots, mixed with small, dense titi shrubbery, and red-tipped cypress knees thrust themselves out of the morass, like strange fungi. Half-sunken fallen trees lay all over the surface, offering a possible way across; and for a hundred yards they scrambled through this nauseous jungle, clinging to the shrubs and jumping from log to log. ”

“ Bob muttered in Joe’s ear. “There’s going to be a robbing riot.”
Joe did not have experience enough to appreciate the force of this. Few things are more downright terrifying than one of these wars in a large bee-yard, when the whole apiary runs amuck. Every colony is at once robbing and endeavoring to rob; every one is fighting every other, and the bees grow so infuriated that they will attack everything within their range, will fly into fire, will sting even the wood of the hives. Men and animals have been killed by being caught in such an affray. ”

“ Bees were flying in clouds, from the hives on the raft as well as from the broken-up hives. It is hard to drown a bee. The wet mass of stupefied insects on the ground was crawling, buzzing, drying off.
“Hold on a bit,” he whispered back. “There’ll be trouble in a minute. They won’t cut up many more hives.”
In fact, the bees were flying every moment more thickly. The cut-out lumps of honey were covered with plundering yellow bodies. Bees were darting from the hives on the raft, flying in circles, returning in excitement, smelling the spilt honey. The whole raft was beginning to stir and roar. ”

“ The others always deferred to her opinion when it came to bees; and Joe thought he had never seen a girl so clever, so practical, and so alive with enthusiasm and spirits.
He took the seldom-used road that they had traveled the day before, up past the old Marshall house, and then by a trail down into the woods of the river orchard. That great tract of pine had a very special interest to Joe, for, as he had explained to the Harmans, it had belonged to their family, he had been born on it himself, and with a little good luck it might have been his own that day. ”

“ The heap of wax was entirely obscured by the clouds of insects all trying to get at the honey. The apiary was full of flying bees, aware that honey was coming from somewhere, but not yet knowing its source, darting toward the woods and returning, and trying to rob one another’s hives. Excited with the plundering, they grew cross. The apiarists had to put on veils to cross the yard; and in the midst of the uproar Bob, happening to glance down the slope, saw a boat run up to the shore, and a man get out of it. ”

“ Alice cried. “Joe’s going to help us. Do you know anything about them?”
“Why I’ve heard the story,” said the planter, much amused. “I know for a fact that the old nigger did have right smart of bee-gums once. What became of ’em after he died I can’t say. I don’t see why some of ’em shouldn’t be there yet. There’s nothing to kill bees in this country, excepting thieves. Why, I knew an old gum that stood in a fence-corner for ten or twelve years, and nobody ever went near it, and the bees are alive and well now.”
“That’s the way you keep bees, too, isn’t it, Uncle Louis?” said Alice, slyly. ”

“ Alice declined to be left alone at the cabin, so they all got into the flat boat and poled up the bayou until they reached the hiding-place of the treasure. Tying up the boat, they landed. With an ax Bob rapidly cut a clear path through the jungle, and they ripped away the covering of brush from the rosin heap.
“Now we’ve cast the die!” said Joe. “We’ve got to work hard and quick—day and night, if necessary—until this stuff is all loaded. Alice’ll stand guard for us. Sam, get out that wheelbarrow.” ”

“ None of the men replied. They shuffled their feet and looked stealthily at one another. Even Sam looked furtive. No white man ever quite fathoms a negro’s superstition. What the red string meant the turpentine workers did not know themselves, but it stirred in them dim, barbaric ideas of voodoo and conjuring, and they were desperately afraid of it.
“Some one’s been trying to scare you,” said Joe. “Ghosts don’t steal gum, do they? Spirits! Spirits of turpentine, I reckon!”
It was a rather feeble joke, but a little joke goes a long way with negroes, and they all laughed uproariously. ”

“ Twice they passed a solitary and deserted riverside warehouse—stopping-places for the boat. Once in a long time there was a patch of “bottom-land corn,” growing rankly in the rich mud; but the only human being they saw was a negro fisherman in a canoe. He was so stupefied by the sight of the big raft of bee-hives that he was incapable of even answering the boys’ hail.
The boys lounged back on their blankets and let the raft drift. Sam went soundly asleep on his back in the sun. ”

“ The honey was dark and dirty besides, full of crushed brood and sand and pollen.
“Not worth bothering with,” said Carl in disgust. “What’ll we do with it? Unless we get it out of the combs it’ll make a mess when we try to melt up the wax.”
“Can’t we-all eat it?” Sam suggested. He had been surreptitiously slipping lumps of comb under his veil all the afternoon.
“Don’t worry, Sam. You’ll get all you can eat,” said Alice. “We’ll spread the rest of the combs over the ground and let the bees rob it out. They’ll carry it back to the new hives, and we’ll get it just the same.” ”

“ THE BEE RAFT
“A raft?” said Joe, astonished. “Nonsense, Sam. Why, it would take a raft as big as the whole bee-yard.”
“Plenty of dry cypress logs down yander, all ’long de bayou. We’d mighty soon make a big raft,” Sam persisted.
At this moment Bob also appeared out of the gloom, roused by the sound of talking.
“It mightn’t take such a big raft,” he said. “We could pack the hives close together. I believe Sam’s hit on something. Can’t we have a light?”
Joe thrust a few fragments of pine, and scraps of an old gum, sticky with wax and resin, into the fireplace, and struck a light. ”

“ The shores were flooded on both sides. Water stood among the trees wherever they looked; there was no place to land. To plunge into that snake-haunted lagoon, into possible quicksands, was worse than to face the guns of the river-men.
In spite of their weight on the steering-oar, the heavy craft wallowed from one side of the channel to the other, moving with maddening slowness. Joe craned his head around to look forward; he thought he saw drier ground ahead, and then the boat grounded heavily on a great sunken log.
“Help me shove her off!” he exclaimed. “Run forward, Sam. Get that other oar.” ”

“ They pushed the boat into it with great hopes. On either side it was tangled with dense cypress and sycamore and cotton wood, heavy-laden with gray Spanish moss, but within fifty yards it shoaled off into a morass of liquid mud.
“This certainly isn’t it,” said Carl, contemplating the depressing spectacle.
“No, Old Dick never lived here,” Joe admitted. “Well, there are plenty more bayous to look at.” ”

“ Joe was thunderstruck at the flood of honey, so different from the slow, dribbling honey flows of the South. At the end of the week all the supers were built full of comb, nearly filled with honey, and the bees were commencing to seal over the earliest cells.
“They’ll need more room, and we haven’t any more supers to put on. They’re going to be crowded. Do you think they’ll get to swarming?” Bob asked apprehensively. Swarming fever would be no joke in that large apiary, disorganizing the whole honey season.
“Hives with a young queen seldom swarm,” said Alice. ”

“ Getting aboard again, the boys pushed a little way further up the bayou, which seemed to extend clear through the River Island and out to the old channel; but the tangled, half-flooded shores were so melancholy that they presently dropped down the current again to the bee-yard. Here they moored the boat, and started to explore the lower part of the bayou on foot.
The ground was higher here, and the walking dry and good, though obstructed with blackberry, gallberry, and oak-scrub. They went down to the mouth of the bayou, then turned inland and came in a circle back toward the cabin. ”

“ Bob remarked. “I don’t care much. No offense to you, Joe, but I don’t think your country is as good as the North for a camping trip.”
“This isn’t a camping trip; this is a bee-hunt,” Joe defended. “This isn’t the time of the year for camping, of course. The swamps are wet, and there’s nothing to shoot, and the snakes are out. You ought to come in January; then you could have the trip of your life, and all the shooting you wanted.”
“But the worst failure is the bees,” said Carl, poking the fire with a cypress pole. “I don’t believe there ever was any Old Dick. It’s all a myth.” ”

“ Both men had guns laid back against the seats, and both carried sheath-knives.
Bob looked at his cousin questioningly, and touched his rifle. Joe hesitated, lying with the powerful little rifle cuddled against his face and his finger on the trigger. He could easily have picked off both the men as they came up, but a boat-load of rosin did not seem worth two men’s lives. But more than that was at stake. It was a question of saving their own lives. In a fight their only chance would lie in shooting first. ”

“ The wind had gone down and there were few mosquitoes, but the boys spent a watchful and uneasy night. The next morning came up clear and warm. The honey flow from the blossoms had recommenced, and the bees were at work. Only a few inveterate robbers still hung about the pile of combs, looking for a last drop. The apiarists still were uneasy and tired after a more or less sleepless night.
“Let’s get to work!” said Carl, after they had lounged about uncertainly for some time after breakfast. “Nothing’s going to happen. I’m going to melt up this wax.” ”

“ Flame ceased to drift over the hives, and presently there was only a great glow of rapidly fading embers.
“Safe, I guess,” said Bob with relief.
“That was those men again!” cried Alice, choking with anger. “I didn’t think they’d do such a thing. They tried to burn up our bees. I wish we’d shot them!”
“I expect they thought the hives would burn easier than they did. We’re lucky to have lost only one,” said Joe. “I wonder what they’ll start next.” ”

“ Bob gave a convulsive gasp as he realized the destruction that was going on.
“They’re killing them! They’re breaking them up!” he exclaimed incautiously; but Joe’s hand on his shoulder stopped him.
The pirates had heard nothing. At a little distance stood the big iron kettle that had been used for rosin, and as they cut out the combs they tossed them into it. A small fire burned around its edges, melting the wax. Where there was any honey in the combs they cut it out and laid it aside, but the Harmans had not left much honey from the last extracting. ”

“ The raft did not ground again, but once it went over a submerged snag with a grinding jar that set all the bees rushing out. The collision might have ripped the bottom out of a boat, but the raft was unsinkable.
The sun went down over the swamps, and Sam lighted the fire again on the bed of sand and prepared supper. Mosquitoes began to be bad; a cool dampness, full of the smell of rotting vegetation, rose from the water. ”