^/ y , V « » 6 ^*iO^ i» ^y-, IdV K' ^' lO-T^. cf?^ THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH C'rossino' a ri(l of tlic swamp. THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH Bt CHARLES TENNEY JACKSON Illustrated with Photographs NEW YORK OUTING PUBLISHING COMPANY MCMXIV Copyright, 1914, by OUTING PUBLISHING COMPANY All rights reserved Mjfvttc f^M^i-vnUi^ CONTENTS CHAPTER I. We Take a Chance With Each Other II. The Old Pirate Folkses . , III. The Baratarians .... IV. A-Cruise on the " Tiger " Boat V. The Old Sto* Balls . , . VI. Blackberry Romance . . , VII. Snakes or Bayou L'Ourse . VIII. Through the Deep Swamp , IX. Some Rough Paddling . . , X. The Waterhouse Boys . XI. Adrift With the Floating Gardens XII. Down La Fourche in a " Gazzoline XIII. Paddling to the Gulf Islands XIV. More Balls, Girls, and Legends . XV. On the Baron's Island XVI. With the Moro Exiles XVII. The " Bantayan " Ends Her Cruise PAGE 11 84 57 78 93 109 132 153 178 194 223 254 269 289 306 320 335 ILLUSTRATIONS Crossing a ridge of the swamp , . ., Frontispiece FACING PAGE The first camp in Barataria ....... 16 The tow steamer finally passed us .... . 24 We inquired the way 32 The trappers paddle from the deep swamp ... 40 An oak that sheltered the buccaneers of Barataria . 48 Running his trapline 56 The ancient burial place of the Berthauds ... 64 The rendezvous of La Fitte's pirates on the shell temple 72 Clark Cheniere's lonely shore ....:.. 80 I tried the pirogue out cautiously 88 A seine company hauling shrimp on the shores of Barataria Bay 104 We dug through the cane to the swamp . . . 112 The cypress reflect their beauty from the swamp lakes 120 A chance meeting at the bayou's edge . . . . 128 Landing on the lily-guarded shore 136 Florion and I hunted squirrels in the deep swamp . 144 Thankful to camp on the roots of a sunken cypress . 152 Now and then we dragged the pirogue from pool to pool 160 ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE We shot squirrels along the jungle-grown shores of Grand Lake 176 On Bayou Teche 192 A terrapin hunter and his " turtle dogs " on Bara- taria Bay 208 The desolate shores of Caminada 216 Raising the seine 232 Site of Jean La Fitte's fort at Grand Terre . . 240 We had reached salt water and salt water men . . 256 We climb above the moss plumes to take an obser- vation 272 The pelicans of the Grand Isle marshes .... 288 Drying shrimp on the platform 304 The sunken shores and cypress spikes of Grand Lake 320 Old Man Captain's camp after the crevasse . . . 336 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH CHAPTER I iVTE TAKE A CHANCE WITH EACH OTHER I NEVER laid eyes upon Hen until we were introduced at the University Club. It was a gray day of dirty snow, February, and the North; and I saw at once that something ailed the man, stomach, or the weather, or busi- ness. I also was peeved — what did Smith mean by introducing two strangers who merely de- sired to be left alone to nurse their grouches? Well, the thing was done, and Hen and I stared gloomily across the table at each other. He looked the last person in the world to start off, on ten minutes' notice, to pursue a phantasy, and so did I; two bachelors, thin of hair, with eye-glasses, and in those mid-thirties when a man begins to think a bit of the long, straight road, and yet can hark back to the high trail of youth. Two men we were without ties 11 12 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH or the saving grace of knowing that one is nec- essary anywhere in the scheme. As Hen mut- tered suddenly, either of us could be eliminated without disturbing, for an instant, the cosmic order. I saw at once something was wrong with his soul or his stomach. Cafes, theaters, cock- tails, newspapers, telephones, appointments, women who seemed to think one was designed by a frivolous providence to amuse them — the whole jangling scheme of the day was irritably foolish. I remarked cleverly that the weather was rot- ten. And the man stared at me a moment and then burst out: "Yes, and let's get out of it!" " Where? " I responded. There was a map of the New World on the wall and Hen suddenly put back his chair, crossed over, and drew a huge circle about the lower half of North America. "Say!" he growled ; *' let's get a canoe and paddle around the Gulf of Mexico!" Now, I had never seen a canoe in my life. Mighty curious, but true. And I had never WE TAKE A CHANCE 13 given a thought to the Gulf of Mexico since high school days. But I looked at the map. Then I looked at the man. Then I murmured: "Well, I don't see what's to stop us. There don't seem to be any obstructions except some islands and Florida, which sticks out a bit in the way, but by paddling carefully a fellow won't hit 'em." Hen looked at me with more approval. " Look here ! I'm thirty-five and feel fifty. Just discovered that I'm hated by every man in our sales department; my stenographer quit last night. Up and told me she wouldn't stand for me any longer. Yah ! " He made an awful grimace at me : " No — not girl — stomach. That's me. Now, what's the matter with you? " " Oh, nothing. Only, I'd like to go back — back to something that isn't smart or clever; dinner people who work so strainedly to impress you; show people who do so much caterwauling to shock you; magazine people who endeavor so highmindedly to enlighten you. There isn't a jolt in the entire smear of 'em, and I want to 14 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH sideste]3 it all. Back — back to something that is mere, simple good humor, so's we could laugh like when we were kids " " That's it! You got it! " Hen pounded the table excitedly. " Back to j^outh. Hey — who was the old party from Spain who got tired of reform and investigation and the drama and all, and went to Florida looking for the Fountain of Youth? His hair was thin and his digestion none too good, so he beat it. Ponce got in wrong. Why, all Florida is jammed with hotels, and the hotels with people who haven't a decent stomach to bless 'em. And their hair — why, it comes from Paris, or Roumania, or Kashgar! Yes, sir, they goldbricked poor old Ponce when he put up there. Now, you and I — we'll get a canoe and go paddle around until we find the Fountain." I had never seen Hen ten minutes before. And, I repeat, I'd never seen a canoe. Life had kept me busied between the shortgrass country and the big cities, and a canoe had just never fallen under my eye. WE TAKE A CHANCE 15 " Well," I responded, "when can you start? " " At six-thirty. We'll grab the New Orleans Limited. You go telegraph to Old Town, Maine, where the best canoes come from, and order one to be sent on to us. I'll chase upstairs and pack my stuff — ^guns and rods and alumi- num cooking outfit and a striped little tent — and the duffle bags " " Piffle sacks ! " I retorted, for I'd never heard of them. " All right. Six-thirty on the Lake Shore. I'll get two taxis for the outfit." We arose and clattered back our chairs. " Beg par- don," I went on, " but what did Smith say your name was ? " Then we both laughed — really laughed, for the first time since the playhouse season opened. " You're right, old man ! One really ought to know, of course, if one is going off to — to " " Find the Fountain ? And more hair — and a stomach? You're right as right can be. But I'll take a chance on you, old top — you and your grouch ! " We were taking chances. One does when one 16 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH agrees — ten minutes after meeting a man — to go roll in the same blanket with him. And eat turtle eggs with him. And fight mosquitoes with him. And hunt for pirates' treasure along with Old Man Captain. And splash with him in the Fountain! Never two men who had fewer illusions than Hen and I. We merely had a vision, and that was of two total strangers, thin of hair and wearing goldset eye-glasses, paddling a canoe around the Gulf of Mexico, stopping, now and then, to inquire the way, and maybe buy fresh rolls of the natives for break- fast. But I leave it to you if we were cynics. Cynics never start to find the Fountain in a sixteen-foot muslin ship. Cynicism stays home and croaks; and afar the sun is shining and the breezes play. Cynics were plenty about the club when Hen and I calmly explained. " The bloom is off" the peach, the faces on the street no longer fair ; a fellow's breakfast doesn't sit well, and his pipe is sour. So, we're going." I'll not rehearse all the croaking. *' Yellow WE TAKE A CHANCE 17 fever," they said. " It's exploded," we retorted. "Snakes!" "We'll carry a barrel of dope." " Get capsized? " " We'll sit on the sea sands and eat turtle eggs when the going's not good." "Hurricanes?" "We'll sit under something when it rains and read the camp goods cata- logs." " Well," they concluded, " chase along — get it out of 3^our systems." Inside of fifteen minutes I had ordered that sea-going canoe from Old Town, Maine. That's all I said. I repeat, I didn't know anything about them. But I didn't tell Hen. I hated to be rude to a stranger. I broke the news to him some weeks later when a ripping sea charged up at us on Lake Salvador, and Hen made some tart comment about my stroke. Then I turned and yelled in the gale. " Hen, I've knocked about all over the short- grass country and the big hills, and steered all kinds of proper devices, but of this craft, tell me, I beg, which end is which?" I yelled all that into the gale. Hen turned 18 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH white, and stopped paddling for an instant. He looked at the far, dim shore over the smother of whitecaps and began to figure up his life insur- ance. " Stung ! " he murmured bitterly — " sure as little green apples ! " "" Canoe? " I sang out again: " Why, I can't even spell it ! " Then he yelled: "Why didn't you tell me before?" " If I had, you'd never have come I " I shouted. " Poor fool ! " he said. " You're right ! " Well, I'm ahead of this narrative, turtle eggs, the Fountain, Old Man Captain Johnson, the Gulf, and everything. As I said. Hen got the outfit. He'd read many more sporting catalogues and outing books than I. At that, neither of us knew a sea cow from a barred Holstein, a tarpon from a tarpaulin. But it didn't make much differ- ence: we never saw any. The first thing Hen got was a hypodermic WE TAKE A CHANCE 19 syringe and some stuff to pump in when a fellow was snake-bitten. And thereafter, in all our adventures, his secret grievance was that I re- fused to get snake-bit. We practiced one day on a Barataria nigger as to needle insertions, but he also declined to get snake-bit and make the experiment complete. Hen was disgusted with that nigger, and that very day we pulled up camp and went on to discover some more public-spirited colored citizen and a handy snake. So all that day while Hen hustled the outfit together, I read up on the Gulf coast country. The articles of agreement between Hen and me were indefinite enough; we merely purposed to canoe around anywhere in the Gulf where it was deep enough. So I read up all the Coast and Geodetic Survey stuff back to 1879. Apparently the War Department spends all its time getting up data which no non-scientific citizen can make head or tail of. Some day I'll head a protest to have geodetic reports made out so that the tired business man who supports 20 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH the Republic on his cigars, highballs, steel rails, ad valorem and otherwise, can make out what the War Department means by all those figures and triangulations which bother the taxpayer who wants to go find the Fountain of Youth. But enough: eight days later two baldheaded men with glasses and khaki suits, abominably new and crinkly, paddled up to a wharf on Harvey's canal in southern Louisiana. There was a brilliant March sun and the world was as clean as a porcelain bathtub. Bald and burned a deep ochre across the brow, and wear- ing glasses — it must have been like an invasion of Martians down in that Louisiana swamp, where no Cajun had ever seen a canvas canoe. Now, frankly, I'll confess they've never seen one yet. Ours was at the bottom of the Atlan- tic. We'd waited days in New Orleans for that canoe shipped from Boston to arrive, and then we hauled our stuff across the Mississippi and camped on Harvey's canal; and the next day paddled a cypress johnboat down toward the Gulf. Not for a month did we learn that our WE TAKE A CHANCE 21 beautiful sea-going canoe had gone down with her ship in a collision off Hatteras. Never mind, I'll tell you something just as interesting as canoe-trips — much more so. You'll not be sorry for reading on. Speaking of colored persons, on our flit through New Or- leans, we saw one on a bicycle flying up the street balancing a tray on his head on which were four plates of oysters on the half shell, a slice of lemon on each plate, and a bottle of beer in the middle. That was worth going South to see. It was good to go, out of the Northern Feb- ruary, and a gray town of docks and overhang- ing cranes and coal carriers and murky slips, and on to greet spring slipping up from Cuba. In central Mississippi we saw a ragged palm, and then a bayonet plant, and, about Pontchar- train in the moonlight, the Spanish moss; and then in somnolent, self-suflicient New Orleans, the roses and the perfume of its women on the street. I tell you we stopped and looked back, just as we had raced to the car window to see 22 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH the moss festooning a lonely cypress above a bayou. It was the South and its promise, and we felt nearer the Fountain, we, the ill product of the times — two spectacled, irreverent, philos- ophizing spectators. I repeat, we were quietly tired, but we were not cynics. The world is big, and after a bit one finds what a miserable little part of it he's been worrying about. Yes, as Hen said, when we paddled that bor- rowed johnboat down Harvey's canal, which is a six-mile cut from the Mississippi to Bara- taria bayou, seven miles above the city of New Orleans : " Old boy, we're off ! This will re- juvenate you! It's good to feel the cut of rude winds, the pain of the beaten spray, the rough edge of the outdoors smiting us as it did Magel- lan, Balboa, or the Saxon sea kings, rather than the crabbed, unhappy pain of towns and house people ! Give me the slant of the rain, the tug- ging blast, the roughness of the earth, and a bed under the stars ! '* Very good. Only he forgot to mention the deep-sea-going mosquitoes, the thundering big WE TAKE A CHANCE 23 mosquitoes of Barataria which can bite through steel plate and make any bed under the stars a puddle of profanity. The first night I counted twenty-eight mosquitoes on a piece of Hen not as big as a dollar, and they had trouble crowd- ing on. Never mind, I will not discourage any- body so early. So we went on in that borrowed johnboat, merely to be adventuring while we waited for our canoe, Maine-made, from Boston. And the first night, after leaving Harvey, and paddling down the dank, smelly banks of the canal which precluded sight-seeing, we struck a tow-steamer bringing in a log raft half a mile long. That outfit about filled the canal. Hen and I pulled our johnboat up on the raft to avoid being crushed, and then it began to rain, while we were traveling backward at a greater rate than we had advanced. It rained an hour, and when we finally were able to slide off the raft and go in free water, it was dark. We paddled hopefully on, wondering if that brand-new camp outfit was really rain-proof. 24 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH It was all very modish in the way of magazine advertisement camp outfits. There was an eight- pound silk tent, seven-by-seven; two duffle bags, each of which contained from ten to fifteen little paraffine bags holding our groceries; aluminum cooking things, and all that; to say nothing of the latest in rods, guns, tackle. Now, I'm no sportsman of that stripe. My roughing was done back in the days when a Western-bred boy counted his cartridges as gold, fished with a nickel line and a mongrel hook, and would start on a trip with a hunk of salt meat and a shirt- sleeve filled with cornmeal. Duffle bags and piffle sacks were unheard of. But Hen had all of them and more. Nothing will so divert a man in camp as two dufflle bags. He wants some sugar — not the tabloid saccharine Hen had in his khaki pocket for emergencies, but real sugar- trust sugar. So he dives into the duffle bag. There are seven- teen paraffine-coated bags in the duffle, each like the other, and the seeker unties each and ties them all up and then concludes his sugar is in The tow stcniiu'r finally i^asscd us. WE TAKE A CHANCE 25 the other duffle bag. So he lugs it out and un- ties seventeen more little brown bags, and then discovers, at length, that the sugar is not in the duffle bags at all, but in the piffle sack, or else Hen is sitting on it. It's always strange how, when dark is coming and it's raining, what you want is in the very last sack of the other duffle, or else isn't in either. Duffle bags are mighty strange. Well, finally we crawled up the muddy bank of that canal onto a small platform above the rainy swamp, which held a black, windowless shack. It leaked, it was full of spiders and ill smells, and back of it the storm howled in the cypress. When we lit a candle in our patent collapsible lantern, that shack looked bad. Up home you wouldn't have housed a tramp cat in it. It seemed a far travel to the Fountain. In this tie-cutter's shanty we cooked a mulligan, and then spread blankets on the muddy moss of the floor and tried to sleep. The mosquitoes came in hordes, and noisy bugs crawled out of the cracks, and lizards raced about the blankets. 26 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH Outside the owls hooted, the mournfulest sound that two seekers of the Well of Youth ever tackled. It made you old to listen to all those eerie swamp noises. And the mosquito cloud thick- ened and the rain beat harder and leaked through, and finally with the boom of the owls and the rush of wind in the moss-draped cypress. Hen and I got up and lit a fire on the floor and sat there, each wondering to himself, whose fool idea this was, anyhow. We remembered last night's comfortable camp on the levee at Har- vey and the hospitable deputy sheriff who strolled in and held up an Italian vegetable man, compelling him to disgorge the best stuff he had for our commissary. When we wanted to pay, the deputy waved the peddier airily on. *' That's all right. What I say, goes. I like you, suh, and this yere's the free state o' Bara- taria. The hull swamp is yours ! " That first night in it, we'd have traded it off "unsight, unseen," as the kids say. We didn't sleep. The racket of that storm, the yowling WE TAKE A CHANCE 27 of the owls each minute nearer, and the heaving of the shack on its flimsy frame above the black bayou, and the mosquitoes which one could see like a gray cloud just outside the range of our smudge, didn't conduce. Near daylight, when the gale fell and the moss ceased its switching on the walls, we wrapped tightly in our blankets and, with nothing but noses to the air — and the mosquitoes — slept. But our noses — Oh, our noses! Heaven must be a place where nothing ever bites one. The next morning we crawled out of that black box to a scene of beauty. You'll have to see a cypress swamp, moss-hung, set with pal- mettoes, perfumed with magnolia, all a-glitter in the sun, to understand. And through it ran the canal like a bright arrow. The mocking birds and blackbirds were singing, and the cardi- nals flitting like bits of red flannel in the breeze. It was all good, and we felt better. We washed and had eggs and coffee, discovering meantime that, despite all our careful elimination of super- fluities for that painfully scientific, aluminum- 28 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH tabloid-duffle-bag-and-piffle kit, we had three hair brushes aboard. Two baldheaded men with three hair brushes down in the Barataria swamps! But already we felt rejuvenated a bit. We decided to keep three hair brushes — who could tell what a draught at the Fountain would do? After breakfast we sat on the black platform and smoked. The beautiful, sprawly swamp about us steamed and flickered. The scarlet tanagers and mocking birds darted here and there, and the brilliant chameleons scampered over our luggage. After a while a noisy little stern-wheeler came by piled to the ears with moss bales. She looked for all the world like an ani- mated feather duster and she ambled to our crazy wharf, ran out a line, and hailed us genially. The crew were a Cajun-Italio-Filipino outfit from the lower lakes, a lean-shanked, hatchet- jawed lot, who at once began to make coffee over our fire. And while we were explaining about owls and mosquitoes and camera and gun WE TAKE A CHANCE 29 that would shoot I-don't-know-how-many-times, and the aluminum cooking pans, along came another moss-boat, and blessed if it didn't throw us a line, quit its business, and start to make coffee over our fire, every man jack of the two crews jabbering, gesticulating, fingering our scientific kit, calling one another to run, look, listen. Talk? You never heard so much multi-speed conversation. And we all made coffee, over and over again, coffee so strong it stained the cups, as black as tar, stimulating as brandy of '73. We, the hosts, lectured ably on every feature of our celebrated camp kit. We drank coffee with each and "^ bon soired/' and bowed and felicitated. When the visitors departed. Hen threw himself on his duffle and looked at me. " Old top, is traveling down here to be a con- tinual social function? Talk? — I never knew there was so much language ! " Then on down the moss-hung and glittering tidal stream we paddled. Once an alligator poked his snout inquiringly out of the reeds, and 30 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH Hen began to assemble his automatic rifle, which would shoot I don't know how many times. I got out our copy of the Louisiana game laws to see if alligators were in season. "Game laws, nothing!" said Hen. "Didn't the deputy tell us this was the free State of Barataria, and anj^thing goes? Ain't we headed right down into the haunts of Jean La Fitte and the buccaneers? Can you imagine Captain Kidd reading up the game laws to see if it was the closed season for Spanish treasure? Me for that 'gator!" Then we stood up in the johnboat and I waved the game laws and Hen his automatic. " Steady her ! " yelled Hen, and pulled the trigger, once, twice. Nothing happened except that Barataria alli- gator winked an eye lazily as the johnboat floated past his starboard bow. " Snap — snap ! " went Hen's highly modern rifle again. " I'm a son-of-a-gun," he mur- mured. " Right on that seat by you," I said, *' is quite WE TAKE A CHANCE 31 a pile of screws and things which you took out of that rifle's innards and never put back." " Couldn't find any place for 'em," retorted Hen. "And — holy banana! See, there's a string tied to that alligator!" Up on the swamp edge now I saw a picka- ninny staring at us with round, wide eyes. He was dressed in a meal sack with holes cut in the corners for his arms to stick through. And he held a rotten rope, the other end of which ap- peared to be attached to the submarine structure of that four-foot alligator. "Hi, boy!" I yelled. "Look out for that 'gator!" " He won't hurt nuffin, boss. Ah hung him out heah to see if he done won't catch hisself some breakfus'. Mammy says he done eat mo* eround de house dan fou' houn* dawgs, and Ah gotter make him work fo' his livin'." " Can you beat it? " gasped Hen, turning to me perspiringly. " If he don't wiggle hisself pretty soon Ah'll sho' haul him asho' and give him a beatin'. Dat 32 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH lazy 'gator don't do nuffin but hang eround de do' step waitin' fo' me to gin him a ham bone." Hen laid down his automatic and picked up his paddle. " Get out of here," he muttered. " This is no place for a sportsman's son! 'Gator on a string sucking a ham bone ! Oh, my degen- erate wilderness! I reckon if we run onto a bear down below he'll be turning a hand- organ! " We hurried on around a bend to get away from that ham-bone alligator. It was a peace- ful spot, and we floated while Hen began to re- assemble his automatic gun that would shoot I don't know how many times. We discovered a venerable colored citizen sitting on a log fishing for perch. " Whe' you-all gemmen gwine? " he inquired reasonably. " We don't know," responded Hen. " But how do we get there ? " " Yo' keep on a-gwine. Dat Tiger boat she come erlong dis evenin' and pick yo' up. Dey's gwine to be a ball down below. Dat Tiger boat We in(|uired the way WE TAKE A CHANCE 33 she's a-comin' loaded with himber an' ladies." Lumber and ladies! " Hooray for the ball! " I said. But Hen looked peeved. That ham-bone alli- gator had knocked all the romance out of Bara- taria, the beautiful, for him. " If I hadn't left all those screws out of my gun," he growled, " I'd have soaked that nig- ger's 'gator so he'd never want ham-bones any more. As for ladies and balls, I decline. I came here for sport — and more hair. For pirate treasure and a stomach that will start without cranking. And tarpon and anytliing else iuj season or out. I'll show these natives some- thing. Whj'-, a real live sportsman never hit this region ! " CHAPTER II THE OLD PIRATE FOLKSES WE rowed the leaky johnboat more hope- ful miles out of the canal into winding Bayou Barataria; Barataria, the un- kempt and the beautiful, stretching out to the great network of waterways and sunken forests and brilliant salt prairies to the Gulf; Bara- taria, the lawless, with its dim traditions of thriftless gold and bloody romance. The ragged cypress with their evil knees jutting out of the black swamp water were on either side, and back of them the wilderness of latanier palms, tupelo gum, oaks, swamp maples, cane, and mangrove, all matted wilh the impenetrable creepers, flower-hung and sweet-smelling. At noon we crawled up on a plank that made up the wharf before a shack set on piles above the sunken bank, ate a snack, and slumbered peace- fully. 84, THE OLD PIRATE FOLKS ES 35 *' Where you going? " queried Hen, somno- lently, after a bit. " I don't know. Where are you? " "Blessed if I know! What's the use? It's fine and sunny." It was. We relaxed. We breathed in that " wind up from Cuba," under the glory of a Louisiana springtime sky, and you could not have bribed us away from the content we had found. It was as if old Mother Nature had passed her hand above us and murmured: " Peace." Actually, I could feel my hair sprout. So Hen and I with the borrowed johnboat and our duffles and piffles journeyed on to the Fountain. We were overtaken by another wheezy little stern-wheeler that afternoon whicli gave us a tow and hauled us deeper into the wilderness. The three Cajuns of the crew bid us thrice welcome. They were a happy lot, these bayou boatmen. Crabs, fish, moss, pelts — credulous, irresponsible, gentle-mannered — their seasonal living came easily, and its isola- tion gave them their character. 36 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH On Bayou Villere, where the trade-boat left us, as it turned off across Lake Salvador, the great brackish tide-water to the westward, we met another lanky pantalooned native, paddling lazily in from his muskrat traps. I ceased rowing to ask about campsites, and he looked amiably doubtful. Two men paddling around in a boat for pleasure! Le nom de Dieu! What next? We had come down from New Orleans — for pleasure! " N'Awlyins? My f adder he say dat fine town. Wan time my fadder he tak hees own crabs up dere. Eheu! My fadder hee say dat N'Awlyins town got mo' people den mos' all La Fourche! Hee say dey mo' boats — sacre, dem boats! You-all know dat Tiger boat? My fadder say wan of dem N'Awlyins boats eat up dat Tiger boat lak wan leetle shrimp. Some time I go up and see dat N'Awlyins town." Less than thirty miles away, he had never seen the city ! He would trap lazily in the great salt marshes, crab lazily in the spring, J)ick moss lazily in summer, finding a turtle now and then, THE OLD PIRATE FOLKS ES 37 or a 'gator to trade to the store-boat; and Sun- day he would play " beeg dog " on the gallery and glance at the girls in their gowns who go by single file on the two-plank walk that strag- gled along the bayou side from house to house. Back of this narrow strip rises the frowning cypress wall; in front, the slow-moving bayou. The sun shines, the children play, the old men mend the seines; and past come the red-sailed luggars from Grand Isle, cypress rafts from the deep swamp, trade-boats bound for the great river to the North which flows many feet above the level of Barataria roof -trees. The " Free State" I So it has been since their fathers fought and smuggled with Jean La Fitte. Yankees may c^me and go with their chatter about reclaiming land and deepening channels, but the Baratarians shrug and stir their cofl'ee. Eh? God is good — He will see to it that there is alwaj^s a mink to trap and a crab to catch — and the sun will shine, and the salt tide move. Tres hien? The first time we had a chance to put up that 38 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH painfully new silk tent — crackly as a girl grad- uate's white skirt — was when we cast the john- boat loose on Bayou Villere, called ^^ adieus'* and "^ bon soirs " to the gentle-mannered crew, and paddled west to Lake Salvador. It was a darkling night and the low dank jungle of prairie cane and squatty cypress on the inun- dated banks offered nothing in the shape of a camp. We had left the last inhabitable land behind at a tumble-down old plantation, wreck of the war and the ceaseless strife with the en- croaching Gulf waters, its three thousand acres of former rice and sugar land, its quarters for four hundred slaves, sugar houses, canals, grown to jungle, the huge, overshot irrigating wheel for the rice lands all a mournful monument of past glories. Berthaud's was one of the three or four plan- tations from New Orleans to the Gulf which await modern engineering to reclaim its fabu- lously fertile arpents. Now it was given over to the trappers and turtle catchers, its legends of La Fitte's treasure, and the slave ship scuttling; THE OLD PIRATE FOLKS ES 39 and the last of the Berthauds lie under the tan- gle of vines covering the shell mound which raises their graves above the tides. The pirates made it a rendezvous for their trade of ill-gotten goods with the Orleanians until Jackson sum- moned La Fitte to his aid at the battle of Chal- mette; and with his amnesty, after the victory, the buccaneer gave up his Barataria strongholds and left American territory, to be sent to the bottom in 1821 by an English sloop-of-war off Galveston. The great plantation was deserted enough now. As we rounded the oak-clustered point to the lake we saw, in a mud-chimneyed hut, a woman's Afric face — the nostrils wide, the tilted chin — ^in her eyes the scorn of the beaten, for, after all, with our platitudinous amendments and proclamations, the negroes are a subject and an alien race. We recalled the drawling hospitality of a deputy up the river: "When you-all get back in June we'll try to hang a nigger for you, if the boys ain't too busy." It was evening when we pulled up at Old 40 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH Spanish Man's Point. The broad bayou wid- ened here to the lake, and behind the scrubby oaks the prairie cane stretched to the gray and somber forest wall a mile away. Nowhere the shelly bank rose ten inches above the black water, but we were astonished to find that here, on the only bit of soil, a ragged little garden sprang. Potatoes, radishes, melon vines — we crushed down a corner of the reedy point and pitched the tent within a foot of the neat little rows. We wondered at that garden all the time we were cutting palmettoes for a bed and diving down in those duffles for bacon and bread and tabloid tea and sugar. And at sunset we had a caller. Down the bayou came a big crazy skiff, black and leaky, the feathered old oar blades nailed to saplings and tied to the craft with twine; and in it, standing upright, pushing on the oars, was Old Man Captain Johnson. We made his acquaintance at once — it was his gar- den! He bumped his old boat ashore and came to the tent in some shy suspicion. We apolo- gized for intruding. T])C" truppcrs puddlr fVoni the deep sw.-inip. THE OLD PIRATE FOLKS ES 41 " Neveh mind that," retorted Mr. Johnson. " I saw you boys passin' this way and I follehed. I wondered what you-all was a headin' out in the lake fo' with a stawm comin' up. Man, you can't camp on this point if she blows — you'll be blowed clean off in the swamp! And the wateh — have to keep rubber shoes on them 'taters of mine when a nor- wester comes ! " We thanked him and explained. He seemed incredulous — his chuckle came — a little dry old man with a little dry old chuckle. What had once been a pair of old hip boots was tied to his feet with twine; he wore a shirt that he'd certain brought from the Surrender; and at his heels were two mongrel hound pups. A hun- gry outfit, but picturesque — it took some time to find the heart of gold in this old drifter, swamper, treasure hunter, veteran of Lee's ragged and immortal host, but we found it. He looked over our sporting-goods catalogue outfit in silence. If such a thing as a collapsible, alu- minum frying pan and telescope cups, jointed rods and reels had ever penetrated Barataria, it 42 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH was before Old Man Captain came down from the Delta country to find La Fitte's gold. We watched his gentle eyes rove over the impedimenta — we had been taken for fortune tellers, traveling doctors, engineers, detectives, in the forty-eight hours since we came into the bayous — and up at Harvey the boys gathered about, bringing nickels to the tent " fo' the show " of which there was none unless it was Hen trying to flip a mule-colored flapjack in a thirty-mile wind down the levee. But Old Man Captain capped the bayous' verdict. " I reck- on," he murmured, picking up Hen's silver- mounted reel, listening to the click, " you-all air goin' to find the big hide-up shu' with this di- vinin' rod! " He sighed and turned to look at his muddy skiffs and two lean pups. " I reckon that there old Pirate tu'n right up in his grave when you wiggle that patent stick oveh him." He mo- tioned back in the oak scrub. And then we saw, beneath the sprawling oak, a low mound among the palmettoes — neat, white-shelled, a stick at THE OLD PIRATE FOLKS ES 43 the foot. " Them old pirate folkses gin right up if they see you boys come fritterin' around with you' treasure machine." Old Man Johnson went on to tell this was the last of Jean La Fitte's men, buried on this point some forty years ago. The story is that in his extreme age Armand Pelletier got drunk in New Orleans and betrayed the secret of La Fitte's big " hide-up " to some strangers who later came to his shanty on Spanish Man's Point and helped the buccaneer search for the exact spot. At any rate, to-day you can see the excavations in the shells; as, indeed, every likely foot of Lake Salvador's shores and all the bayous from Grand Terre to Butte la Rose have their diggings and their traditions. But the Baratarians say that one night, knowing Pelle- tier's weakness, the strangers sent him down the bayou to get a cask of wine, and on his return, drunk, they got him drunker, and when he re- covered, they had gone — and the treasure hole was deeper, the " hide-up " stolen ! Twenty thousand dollars, old Pelletier swore they got. 44 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH and he stayed on the Point with his demijohns and legends, until he died and the wild hogs ate him. Captain Johnson's neat little mound hid the rest. " Sorteh fixed it up," apologized the old rebel gently, *' I reckon he wa'n't such a heap bad pirate afteh all, only bad fo' liquehl " The Captain took coffee with us and put off in his unwieldy skiff to his home in an old house- boat half a mile down the bayou. " My old shack went asho' in the big stawm, and I took to gardenin'," he said, "and you boys betteh come down and camp with me befo' she blows up here." But we declined. We slept the sleep of the just and mosquito-bitten, despite the lizards racing about the dry palmettoes of our bed, and awoke to the loveliness of a Louisiana spring morning. In the old oak above the pirate's grave, the blackbirds and the cardinals called and flitted, the lake lay like a mirror, and Old Man Johnson's blow had not left a shadow across the lustrous sky. Cajun coffee, as the bayou men showed us, and eggs, and bread — THE OLD PIRATE FOLKSES 45 what a feed! We were on the last of it when Captain Johnson came yawing round the bend with that vast leaky tub of his — how the little old man worked it at all was a mystery. He was bashful as a girl when we hailed him, and brought him ashore for coffee. He was " run- nin' " a crab line and just pulled up to see how we slept. And while we gossiped and had more coffee, two pirogues of the muskrat trappers stole out of the reedy banks and drew down on us. They saw the coffee dripper and came ashore. Neither of the Creoles knew a word of English, but coffee is interpretative down Bara- taria way. We made another potful and smiled; they drank another potful and smiled, and waved muskrat skins and commented and examined again that wonderful outfit from treasure rods to Hen's brand new camera which had all the modern hyphenated attachments. Then more coffee, and we all stretched lazily in the shade by the pirate's grave and conversed unintelligibly but with animation. Another trapper came later; therefore, another pot was 46 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH dripped. This chap knew some English — he was a traveled person; had been to N'Awlyins and to " Mawgan City." He was a man of affairs, too — ^he had an uncle who ran a potato boat on La Fourche, though he himself, after the manner of the Cajuns, pre- ferred to sell crabs at ten cents a basket and buy potatoes at forty, notwithstanding that the backyard of each of the little places along Bara- taria was rich vegetable mould that would raise anything except the exertions of the inhabitants. Back of the " forty arpent line " no Baratarian would venture save in his picayune trapping and turtling. We met our friend — indeed, all of them — that " evening " at the store down the bayou, when the fishers and trappers and moss- ers gathered for their afternoon. The children play among the skiffs and pirogues hauled on the bank, while the men watch the luggars and intermittent crab boats crawl past on their way to the big river to the North. Here, one of them enlarged superiorly be- fore his fellows and to us on the benefits of THE OLD PIRATE FOLKSES 4T knowing the English. "My f adder, he know; my mudder, she know. She say dat way to get reech queek. My fadder he tell me wan time in de woh he up to Plaquemine in hees boat and he see come drift down river wan beeg barge. She all load wif cot', and wan Yankee sat on dat cot' all alone. My fadder, he had rifle and he t'ink : * 'Now I get reech queek ! ' He go up along dat barge piled so high wif cot' and he call to dat Yank : * You get down or I shoot it! ' Dat Yank whistle, and up come 'bout five hundred Yank! My fadder, he wan su'prised man! He tried to explain to dat Captain he only foolin'. But dat Captain he no understand my fadder, what he say. He get tired, he say: * Here, you, I got wan man to teach you Eng- lish 'f o' you talk me ! * And he put my fadder in jail wif a Creole nigger named Salvator, give 'im wan, two, tree days learn English or he shoot. My ole man he kept dat nigger up all night, tree nights, by Gar, learnin' dat English! You bet, he never forgot dat English. Dat's why I wan educated man. My fadder, he say: 48 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH * Steve, you learn to spek 'fo' you try to get reech queek wif Yankees ! ' " We loitered among the friendly folk upon their doorsteps along the single street. Three more " sto's " in the straggling line of houses, each with its raised walk above high water lead- ing back to the threshold. They all knew us — the notorietj^ of a stranger, and on such an obvi- ously ridiculous mission as " pleasure," had spread to every ear. Their unbelief was almost frank. Ole Man Captain told us soon enough that his Creole neighbors thought us either de- tectives or fortune tellers, or secret surveyors. Pleasure? — Mon Dieii, would a man come down the bayou in a johnboat for pleasure? Would he not rather go about the nickel shows in N'Awlyins? That was a pleasant lie to conceal some purpose. Also the fame of our mysteri- ous apparatus in the little green silk tent was abroad. Even Old Man Captain sanctioned that — a divining rod for the treasure of La Fittel Thence on in marsh or cypress glade many an eye peered out on our innocent camp on Bayou Villere. An oak that slieltoml the huccancTrs of Barataria. THE OLD PIRATE FOLKSES 49 It was resolved the next day that Hen should go back to New Orleans on a quest of the miss- ing canoe. I, meantime, yielded to Captain Johnson's fears that a norther would blow me off the Point — or was it his fear lest I secretly go to digging for Pelletier's hide-up? — and moved camp down the bayou to his stranded houseboat. I was willing to go — to the west stretched the wide and uninhabited lake, not a soul on all its sunken shores, and the weather was dark. While I was piling stuff in the skiff, Hen having taken the borrowed johnboat back to New Orleans by a passing steamer, I heard the Captain threshing in the palmettoes about the pirate's grave. When I came on him he was holding an enor- mous king snake by the tail and paddling him gently with a potato vine, chiding as one would a child. " Darn yo — I'll pester yo' — told yo' to stay in them melon vines and keep them moc- casins chased out o' yere ! Now yo' git back and hustle I" With that he threw the six-foot Mr. King half across the garden and turned to speak to me. 50 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH " Got to lam him a little," he complained, " or he gets lazy as pizen!" But the next sunny morning I saw the Cap- tain's pet stretched ruminatingly out on the shell grave, an indifferent pupil, indeed. I put in an idle four days while Hen was away. The threatened norther splashed down on us the second night, and when the waves began to hurry across the six feet of shell dirt between me and the old trapper's stranded boat, I was glad I was away from Spanish Man's Point. The Captain had insisted that I bunk in with him, but when I saw the inside of his leaky shack fourteen feet by, perhaps, eight, and in it his cookstove, bunk, two dogs, traps, hides, table, and accumulation of old clothes, nets, and whatnot, black with smoke and grease, and aired by a nine-inch window, I preferred the tent. We had piled the palmetto and moss high in it, but by midnight I heard the soft lap — lap of tlie water driven by the gale under the canvas. And all night and day the little tent of eight pounds' weight ballooned like a paper bag in the storm, but bravely shut out wind and rain THE OLD PIRATE FOLKS ES 51 alike. But the storm did one noble service — not a mosquito bothered one of all the invad- ing hosts the other evenings brought. Old Man Captain Johnson and I had some rare fraternizing over his old wood stove those stormy days while the cane rattled on the sides of his shack. He complained that some of the Creoles had taken away his short ladder. " I need that laddeh, fo' whenever it rains I have to get up and put clay on this roof.'* Also he gently grieved against his livelihood: " Lost ma crab line in the last blow ; that boat trader wants a dolleh and fo' bits for a new one. Where I get a dolleh and f o' bits ? '* It indeed had ruined him, poor old derelict, wreck of the Confederacy cast up in this pool! He lived on crabs and fish and corn mush, never tasting fresh meat from one month to another. " Can't catch no crabs, fish don't bite, wadin' after moss gives me chills, and rat pelts ain't worth skinnin'." He sighed gently: " Some- times I wondeh why I eve' left that Western country." That Western country! Through four after 52 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH years of his brave and losing fight with fortune I knew Old Man Captain; on stormy lake and deer trail, and by campfires under his palmetto shacks, and ever the old romance came out in the tales of his forty years' wandering after he forsook the broken South. *' Out in that West- ern country " — that was the way he began them all. He would seldom revert to ante-bellum days. " When I come back to Alabama from Look- out prison, afteh the Surrendeh, I was a boy just seventeen — and wounded. My father used to work a hundred and fifty niggehs. They wasn't one there. House was burned, weeds choked the cotton fields, and the Yankee cavalry was runnin' off the rest of ou' poor stock. Eve* boy I used to know in that neighborhood was dead or gone just like my folks. So I threw a saddle on the only horse the raiders had over- looked on ou' plantation and struck out fo' that Western country. Fo'ty years in that Western country — then I drifted back and farmed up the river a bit. But it's no place fo' a white THE OLD PIRATE FOLKSES 53 man on those big plantations — a free man and a po' man. I had a dream about findin' the big pirates' hide-up and I come down yere. I been searching boys — reckon you-all'll beat me with that little jigger-rod findin' that treasure!" Vainly we protested that we had never heard of the pirates' treasure until we came to Bara- taria. Old Man Captain smiled gently. The coincidence was too strong. Two mysterious strangers with maps and a little *' jigger-rod " camped right on Old Spanish Man's Point, where the last of La Fitte's men met his death! *' Reckon, boys, they'll be enough fo' us-all." He watched the waves of Lake Salvador maul- ing his potato hills and roasting ear stalks. " Boys, when we find that big hide-up, we'll have some fresh meat in this camp. Crabs and mush and lard and coffee is good, but some fresh hawg-meat — if we eve' find that treasure we sure have hawg-meat ! " After supper, as we stirred our coffee, Old Man Captain grew a bit at ease with me and that fabulous fishinj; rod of Hen's. He cast an 54, THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH eye of gentle envy on the leather case which hid it. " I done went to a medium woman up river afteh I had that dream and give heh fo' bits. She told me to buy a divinin' rod and come down to Barataria and find that treasure. Yes, seh, she done tell me about a man in La Fourche who had a divinin' rod. I come down through the bias and hunt that man up. He wanted fo' dollehs fo' his rod, and I didn't have no fo' dol- lehs. But he done let me go huntin' them pi- rates' hide-ups with him. We done went all round Lake Salvador from the Temples to Grand Coquille. That rod it done point no'th, and we follehed. It done point wes', and we follehed. It done point eas', but we got into the Barataria swamps so deep that that La Fourche man he done got scared and went back. *' He offered to sell me that rod for two dol- lehs, but I didn't have no two dollehs. It was a powe'ful bahgain, but I didn't have no two dollehs. And just my luck, after he quit I done come right slap onto Spanish Man's Point, whe' THE OLD PIE ATE FOLKSES 55 them old pirate folkses sure made their big hide- up. Yes, seh, hyar she be, and you boys done got the little jigger-rod to find it! " Now, I leave it to you — what was I to say? I was thinking about that the next morning when I heard the Creole trappers stealing past to Lake Salvador in their pirogues, their soft voices coming above the dip of the paddles. Before noon they were returning, and a few stopped shyly to pass the day with Old Man Captain. They started their coffee fires in the white shell bank, made me presents of turtles and crabs, and manifested the same polite curi- osity about these two Yankees who studied maps and had no particular business in these parts beyond the absurd one of " pleasure." Old Man Captain was off to the cypress swamp before I was up. He had a " tote road " built, along which he brought the black moss that was later sold to the trade boats. We dined on fried duck and turtle — with eggs. Now, turtle eggs are peculiar. As Old Man Captain put it, *' They're cooked when they 56 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH ain't." I didn't get much satisfaction out of that entree of turtle eggs. They are strange as Hen's sporting-goods' catalogue idea of camping out. You can't cook the white of a turtle egg. You simply can't. Or maybe " it is when it ain't," as Old Man Captain says. Turtle eggs are as peculiar as duffle sacks. CHAPTER III THE BARATARIANS HEN came back from New Orleans the fourth day, disconsolate. Not a word of our Old Town canoe. The shipping agents were as much mystified as we. There seemed nothing to do but stick around Old Man Captain's camp and await it. Meantime we went hunting with Old Man Captain and his pups, Ponto and Flora. They were " powe'ful for turtles," and we secured five. Also turtle eggs — and we had had turtle eggs for three days. Old Man Captain would take his two dogs and put off through the swamp, Hen and I follow- ing with the gun and camera. The turtles were out on the ridges now to lay their everlasting eggs, and presently we would 57 58 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH hear Ponto and Flora barking away in a bit of latanier palm scrub. Over rotten logs and shaking bog and under vines and gray moss plumes hanging from the cypress we struggled to come upon the dogs baying at a perturbed Mobilian who wanted to hasten back to the swamp pools but declined with the dogs bawl- ing in his face. Capture was simple. Old Man Captain merely turned the turtle on his back, gagged him with a bit of moss and later, on our return, strung him on a pole which we car- ried end and end triumphantly back to camp. Ponto and Flora were great pups, and if Hen had ever got his multi-speed, bi-chromatic, double-action camera to working, we would have taken their pictures baying a turtle. But Hen's camera was as accurately cantankerous as the automatic rifle or the duffle sacks — or tur- tle eggs. We read all the directions, unscrewed and screwed up all the attachments, and still no one could make head or tail of that camera. The next day the norther blew again — worse than ever. The tiny ridge of land shook with THE BARATARIANS 59 the mauling waves off the lake. Behind was the deep swamp with the backing waters of the Gulf curling up inch by inch until it was run- ning in our tent, which tore and yanked at the guy ropes. At sunset, when we were making up the damp blankets, we discovered a five-foot cottonmouth under the palm leaves which had served to keep our bed out of the water. There was some excitement. We killed that snake and with a candle made a hairline search of that bed, I tell you. Old Man Johnston added to our night's comfort by amiably remarking : " 01' Misteh Cottonmouth just naturally curious to find out what yo' tent is, so he crawl in. Yo' better stir up yo' beds twice a day. 01' moc- casin done been heap poison fo' a ISTo'then man." We certainly stirred up our beds often after that! The next day was better. Hen went catfish- ing off the log rafts, and I listened to Old Man Captain expound religion as he sat on the edge of his crab float. *' The Lawd done tell us His disciples went 60 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH in sheepskins, but sometimes I tell the Lawd I ain't even got a sheepskin to cover mah holi- ness. I live out yere among the frawgs and the bats and the owls and the 'gators, but I think a heap, and sometimes I get up o' nights and walk back and forth from the bia to the swamp callin' on the Lawd if I been Holiness enough for His Elect." He eyed the two hound pups gulping the corn bread he crumbled for them. " I used to won- deh, when I was in the ahmy, fo' I knew this Nation was in fo' a mighty judgment fo' all this killin' of Indians and slavin' of niggers. Yes, seh, it was a foolish war. I was in twenty- six fights and wounded and a prisoneh, and when I come home I say: * Motheh, I'm a Lin- coln man now.'" He sighed: "And if that man Lincoln had only lived? " — again his sigh and his blue eyes grew vague — *' I reckon I'd have had heart to stay home South instead of drift out in that Western country. He was ou* friend! " Brave, lonely soul building his storm-beaten THE BARATARIANS 61 thatch, fighting for his crop against the en- croaching Gulf, calling on God to judge his Holiness, magnanimous always in his words for the conquerors of the Lost South with which he had gone down to ruin — never in all the years of our friendship, did Old Man Captain fail us in his gentleness, his honor. All that was in his palm thatch, hung about with traps and ragged clothes and flotsam he offered without apology, without pretense or appeal to sympathy. He had the clearest, most dispassionate view of some conditions. " I come down hyar in the swamps, fo' I wanted a place where a man can be a man. Up in the big plantation country the's no place fo' a white man. White man don't get justice around the big plantations. The planters don't want no stranger who might talk to their nig- gers too much. Yo' see, they work the niggers at about fo' hundred per cent, on their money. Niggers puts in a crop and just befo' Christmas he wants a little money, just as he's always got a little money and some sto' stuff advanced him. 62 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH The boss gives him a little money. Well, the fool nigger he celebrates on his Christmas money, and after January first they take all the niggers one by one into the office to close the year's account. The's fo' or five white men sittin' round that office and Mr. Nigger sees a gun or two round handy. The clerk he figgers a bit over his book, while the nigger stands with his hat off listenin'. Pretty soon the boss takes a paper from the clerk and he says to the nig- ger: * Jim, he's yo' year's due — thirty- fo' dol- lehs.' " The nigger he just stands starin'. * Thirty- f o' dollehs ! Why, boss, that all I got comin' ? * Then if he asks fo' an account the white men look peculiar. Nigger's eye is on them guns. But the boss reads off his account. The' it all is. Now the fool nigger neve' kept no account. He can't read or write and he can't remembeh what he bought at the sto'. He neve' saw no money all yea'. He just traded in his pay checks. Well, the' is Mr. Nigger, and the's the fou' or five white men and a gun or two. Nigger don't THE BARATARIANS 63 kick. He fiddles his hat a while and goes off with what they give him. If he kicked, they'd beat him up with the butt of a gun and tell folks he got insolent. And he don't sue no white man either up in that plantation country. Some nig- gers have sued white men — and they generally disappear curiously. Sometimes they find 'em floatin' in the river. If nigger goes to another plantation the boss sends that account afteh him — and he works it out. " Yes, seh — clean slavery just as it was in Alabama whe' my father worked a hundred and fifty niggers. And it's no place fo' a po' white man. He ain't wanted. He goes to the plan- tation sto' and he has to pay the nigger price, and if he kicks he gets nigger justice. And the nigger price is fo' hundred per cent., and nigger justice is the butt end of a gun. I'm one of Lee's old men, and I wouldn't stand it. I come down in these hyar swamps where they's free men. Lots o' snakes and owls and 'gators and skeeters, but it's a white man's country! Yes, seh — a wJiite man's country! " 64 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH Then he went on with his dry little chuckle: "But with you Yankees comin' down hyar, I don't know. Up in the Delta they say that if any smart Yankee comes down the' with five thousand dollehs, in ten yea's he can make fifty thousand — out of the niggers. Fine country fo' cawn and cane and cotton, but the principal in- dustry is niggers ! " He looked slowly off to the north: "But I done think if Abe Lincoln had lived, he'd have found some way fo' us to live and be square together. Rich white men, po* white men, and niggehs. Yes, seh, he was po' white himself." He told us confidentially of the way the swamp trappers regarded us. He himself had rather got over the idea that we were after Jean La Fitte's gold with the little "jigger-rod," having watched Hen thresh the bayou after the voracious gars. " These Cajuns they think yo' detectives. These woods hide a bit of men who come down in the free state o' Barataria fo' they own rea- sons. Or else yo' surveyors. First they thought m THE BARATARIANS Go. yo' was runnin' a show, but yo' tent is too small. They ain't scared of yo' findin' treasure, fo' they been diggin' up these shell mounds fo' a hun- dred yea's themselves." The Cajuns looked with indifferent eyes on the efforts to reclaim the ancient Berthaud planta- tion. They had trapped and hunted over its abandoned fields and in the swamps so long that they looked on its eighteen thousand acres as their own. We learned all this when Hen went down to the old house among the live oaks. He came back to say we were invited to call, and that he heard there was a young lad3^ There- fore we took off our flannel shirts and washed them in Old Man Captain's mush kettle. Now, the only thing I have against washing a fellow's shirt in a mush kettle is that he boils mush in as fast as he boils dirt out. It was a bad job. And the next day Hen and I wore those two bemushed shirts down to the plantation. And there wasn't any young lady. (I thought so. They are as unsatisfactory as turtle eggs.) The plantation folk, who were lonely Ohioans 66 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH making a vain effort to clean up the ancient rice fields, were aghast at our idea of that Gulf trip in a canoe. They wanted us to stay and help fight mosquitoes and grow up with the country. Thanks, no. It was no place for, a baldheaded man, in mosquito time. Besides, there was the Fountain of Youth. We were headed >vrong just at present owing to that confounded canoe, but we expected to face about soon. Old Man Captain was greatly curious after our visit to the " big rich folks " on the plan- tation. He confessed shortly that it was be- cause he was afraid they, too, were after the pirates' hide-up. What else would bring Yan- kees down to Barataria? And he was still a trifle suspicious of us and the *' jigger-rod." Hen was fishing the next day when Old Man Captain shyly approached me. We had been fraternizing on that most intimate of all out- door discussions — grub. Old Man Captain " loved " dandelion greens and crabs and mush with sugar and lard. He didn't hanker after Hen's dehydrated vegetables, nor our com- THE BARATARIANS 67 pressed tea tablets nor chrysolose sweetening. Now I didn't either. Old Man Captain and I were a bit primitive in our tastes and distrust of catalogue camp outfits. I suppose that was the reason Old Man Captain confided in me. *' Reckon, while Mr. Hen's a-fishin', you-all wouldn't like to take a little run off'n the big cj^press? '* "Treasure?" I ventured. Old Man Captain smiled deprecatingly. " Sho' hit it. It's somewhe' yandeh." He waved his hand vaguely toward the blue wall of the flooded forest to the North. *' That me- dium woman said three oak trees on a point, and the water runnin' east past an old plantation." Then he leaned to me and whispered mysteri- ously. " And I saw the chart. Sho' did. Could a bought that chart, but I didn't have no eight dollehs. She was a fine woman — a widda woman. I always did love spiritual business. When I met her up river she tried to get me to quit drif tin'. Says she: * A rollin' stone gath- ers no moss.' Saj^s I: * Widda, and a settin' 68 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH hen neve' gets fat.* That widda woman sho' took to me. She wanted me to stay, but when I wouldn't she showed me her chart and says: * You go down river and look f o' the pirates* hide-up.' Then she describe it just as it lay hyar. Three oaks on a point and water flowin* east past an old plantation. When I struck this point, and the Cajuns show me that old grave and whe' they dug up the shell banks, I didn't say nothin'. But I thinks: ' Widda, yo* sho' air spiritual. Hyar's the hide-up ! * '* "Honest, Cap?'* " Right yere ! I been all over the rivers out in that Western country. I come down the Rio Grande and up the Brazos and down White River, and across the Sabine, smellin' eve'whe' fo' treasure. When I got to La Fourche coun- try I began to get wahm. I look at eve' planta- tion fo' the picture as the widda woman de- scribed it to me. I crossed Lake Salvador in my ol' johnboat, and when I come into Bia Vil- lere I shout : * Widda, yo' sho' air spiritual I ' " He pointed out the door of his shack. " Three THE BARATARIANS 69 trees and the water flowin' east. And Ber- thaud's is the ol' plantation." I sat down on Old Man Captain's crab box and looked around. Confound the luck, couldn't Hen and I ever get away from Women and Romance? But there they were shining in Old Man Captain's eyes I " Hyar she be ! " crowed Old Man Captain. " And yo' two boys happened along to help me find it." I looked out at Hen fishing off the log raft. He sat in the sun, clothed in nothing except a cigarette and his faith that the fishing was good. The Cajun trappers paddling home called gen- tle advice : " Man, yo' put on yo' shirt or yo' get f eveh ! " He waved his cigarette airily. Old Fitzende paddled on, shaking his head. These bayou men fear the sun and breeze, but they will shut them- selves in their twelve-by-fourteen windowless board shacks, batten the door tight to keep out mosquitoes, and sleep night long. They will run a trap-line twelve miles through the swamp 70 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH in muck to their waists, but if one took a real swim they would regard him as ready for the last sacrament. I think they imagined Hen and I were both a bit crazy. Who else but a lunatic would sprawl out full length on the log raft doing nothing for hours but listen to the mock- ing birds in the green cane these sunny March mornings ! As I said, I looked at Hen. He did not ap- pear to be a seeker of the Golden Fleece. An Argonaut should have more hair and ambition. Then I looked at Old Man Captain. There was romance. There was adventure. There was eternal youth. I almost wished that Hen and I did not know so much. I would have liked to go off with Old Man Captain in the leaky johnboat to dig up something or other. Every man ought to have a widda woman who would send him out to find treasure. But when he's thirty-five he's either got his, or lost a deal of interest. I wanted to set off gallantly with Old Man Captain on that rousing treasure hunt, but I just couldn't. The cities had taken it out of me. THE BARATARIANS, 71 " Old Man," I answered, " it would be great stuff, but the mosquitoes off in that swamp " That ended it. Old Man Captain knew me for a Philistine. He turned and began baiting his crab-line, removing Ponto from the basket with a gentle push of his foot. " I gin that dog a half pan of mush day befo* yesterday, and here he is wnth his ribs bellerin' out like a luggar sail, actin' like he was hungry.'* I w^ashed dishes from the raft end while the Captain ran his crab-line. More pirogue men paddled past to chide Hen. " Man, whe' yo' clothes? Yo' get shakes sho' in dat sun!" A lanky- jawed fisher came ashore to protest to us. All the village was talking about it down below, he said, this Yankee who enjoyed fishing without a shirt to his back. And when Hen finally tired of the argument, dived off the logs and came sputtering up yards away, there was a chorus of dismay. No Baratarian ever went swimming. The bayou was full of sharks. And twelve-foot gars. And snakes. And 'gators. The trappers awaited the tragedy. But Hen climbed ashore, found his shirt, beat the mush 72 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH out of it across a china berry tree and put it on. "Hi, let's eat!" he said. "Antoine, have coffee with us ! " That was unnecessary. Every pirogue man had his own tiny dripper, and on every canoe, or from a few heaped twigs on the white shell shore, a coffee fire was going. Old Man Cap- tain, as usual, had some observation to make about the cooking. " I once knew a nigger from Grand Lake who put crabs in his coffee fo* breakfast. . . . But I'd rather have lemon." Antoine explained the turtle industry. " I catch heem out in the prairie by dem mud holes. I hook heem over, and tie hees tail and put a stick in hees mout' and send him to N'Awlyins for seben cents hees pound. He come out dat bia to lay hees eggs. M'sieu, yo' want some turtle eggs dis mawnin'?" " No! " we roared. " Everything in camp is full of turtle eggs! " *' Except me," added Hen; " I decline. Cap, you can't chuck another turtle egg down me! I'll take crabs in my coffee, if it's customary THE BARATARIANS 73 in the best families down here, but no turtle eggs." A week longer we camped along Bayou Vil- lere. We caught shrimp, as they showed us, by letting down a green willow or mangrove until the crustaceans gathered in its branches, and then lifting it deftly over a dip net. We shot a "^ dos Gris " or two, although the duck season was over, and landed a fourteen-pound catfish one morning with great eclat. Now and then a tradeboat, gasoline propelled, or a red-sailed luggar drifted past. Once a two-stack steamer came out of Lake Salvador and went up the winding bayou to the Mississippi. And all the lazy, colorful, primitive life of the south coast got into us. " If we don't move on soon somewhere," mur- mured Hen, " blamed if I ever will. What was it we came down here for, anyhow? Oh, yes — that Ponce de Leon stunt. It's a good thing he didn't stop anywhere to go catfishing off a log raft. There's only one thing wrong with this fishing down in Louisiana. A fellow just gets 74 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH settled back in the scow, his eyes shut, listening to the birds, and the breeze and the sun makes him think of Paradise when some fool catfish comes along and yanks the line. Then a fellow must sit up and haul it in, or bait his hook, or do something." Old Man Captain the next day nudged me and winked at Hen out on the bayou. " That air boy's fishin' without any bait because he don't want the fish to disturb him! " " Then," I retorted, "it's time to move on!" But where to? No word of that special-to- order deep sea-going canoe. "As an expedition to out-game old Ponce de Leon," murmured Hen, as we lay under the green silk tent, " this is getting frazzled. For Heaven's sake, what is the Cap'n cooking now? Turtle eg " No. We all got together, even Hen working, and dined excellently on baked catfish, sweet corn, boiled ham, rice jamhelaya (in which Mon- sieur Perrine had instructed us), and Cajun coffee. THE BARATARIANS 75 There appeared after dinner, as we smoked under the china berry tree, one Unc' McFrancis, a venerable and dignified colored gentleman. He was a pensioner, veteran of a Ken- tucky Union regiment, and also had once been a slave up river. Unc' McFrancis talked of many things, catfish, philosophy, and our par- ticular chances of getting anywhere from Bara- taria. " Most folks don't come here," he said. " And what do, dey gin'erally git away soon — or else stay. If Ah had as much money as you- all, Ah'd git away." Of course we talked treasure. Everyone did sooner or later. Unc' McFrancis took no stock in the La Fitte treasure yarns. " Dem ol' pi- rates folkses, dey didn't bury nuffin round hyar. And if dey did, dey'd dig it up again. Ah reckon pirate folkses air just like other folkses. Ain't goin' to leave any money round the yahd fo' chickens to scratch — no, seh!" Old Man Captain looked pained. Romance had taken another jolt. I tried to cheer him up by arguing for the cause. But Unc' McFrancis 76 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH was not to be argued. " Ain't but two things su'tin in this worl'. One is livin' and the other is killin'. Money, hit belongs up in them oncer- tain things o' this life. Great wealth, hit brings its troubles. Once Ah knew a colo'd man that won eighty dollehs with dice. He nebbeh was no good afteh dat. If dem ol' pirate folkses were to come back to me in a vision and show me dat money, Ah'd say: * Lawd, yo' put away dis temptation ! ' " Unc' McFrancis was a deacon of the " Bap- tist St. John" church, which we were told was *' up de bia." He produced a card and an awl and Hen and I punched holes in the margin, which holes cost us ten cents each. Unc' Mc- Francis said it was to buy a stove for the Bap- tist St. John congregation next winter. Also, we could punch three holes for a quarter. But Hen punched his hole extra large and we let it go at that. He tried to explain that large holes meant more Holiness, but Unc' McFran- cis' theology had not got that far. He swapped turtle yarns and fish yarns with THE BARATARIANS 77 us, and when Old Man Captain complained of Ponto's appetite, Unc' rejoiced. " I got er dawg down the bia dat I hatter keep tied up with a piece of vanilla rope he so powe'ful hon- gry. He grab one piece o' hoecake in his mout' and anodder piece under each paw and den he look 'round fo' mo'. Sometimes dat dawg al- most human." He went off at mosquito time, which is coin- cident with bedtime. The next day we saw the entire colored population of Barataria in five skiffs starting from Bayou Villere to the place of worship. They were a picturesque fleet, the women in bright turbans, the men in derbies and stiff shirts pulling at the oars. The skiffs followed in line among the purple water hya- cinths under the live oaks, and when they had rounded the point I heard Unc' McFrancis: " All Ah want is free salvation. And fifty acres in mah ol' plantation — O Lawd ; how long ? " CHAPTER IV A-CRUISE ON THE " TIGER " BOAT MONDAY morning Hen and I idled down to the village two miles below. We went in a borrowed johnboat. Yoii can go nowhere except by boat. The deep swamp rises back of the low ridge along the bayou side, and beyond the first fringe of prai- rie cane, the black, grim cypress forest. None venture there except the trappers and the tie cutters. Barataria village is a long straggling row of forlorn houses facing the lily-filled bayou. Under the live oaks on the shell heaps the fish- ing skiffs are dragged; and here men sit of afternoons baiting the crab-lines with " sinies." Sinies are beef sinews as it took us some time to ascertain. Nothing else will resist the vora- cious maw of a Baratarian crab. 78 A-CRUISE ON THE " TIGER " 79 Mornings the village street, or rather the bank, was deserted. The male population was off " beyond the forty-arpent line " trapping; or running the crab and fish lines in Lake Salva- dor, a mile to the west. The trapping, save for the muskrats, was about done. We were shown, at Manila village later, three thousand dollars' worth of mink and otter pelts. The trappers, however, realize little. With all their hardy work, the trade boats and the " sto' " makes the middleman's profit. The crab fishing was now the main depend- ence. But even at this the Baratarians prefer to sell crabs at fifteen cents a basket and buy potatoes at forty, rather than attempt to put in a garden on the rich strip of soil back of their shacks. In some of the tumble-down gardens oranges were still golden on the trees, and un- kempt roses ran over the fences. But on the banks, among the abandoned luggars, the Ca- juns sat at their net-mending and baiting of crab-lines. In vain the new proprietor of Ber- thaud's plantation across the bayou offered day 80 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH labor. No one wanted the Yankee's dollars. I made a trip on a gasoline luggar to the city that week to ask further of our missing canoe. " Juan, the Manilaman," was the master of The Young Lady, and now we first heard of the Fili- pino colonies of the lower lakes, the Chino-Fili- pino peoples who had been established on the south coast for forty years before the average American had the name Filipino brought to his ears by Dewey's guns. I told Juan, the Manila- man, we would surely accept his invitation to sojourn there. The little old tub churned up through Lake Salvador past its sunken, lonely shores, around Couba island and into Bayou Sennett, and at evening we reached Westwego. I was struck by the names of the boats we passed in the swamp channels . " Just Like You/' ''Double Trouble/' '' Killgloom/' ''The Good Child/' " Visaijan/' " PuriUj/' Few of them, however, used their picturesque red sails, for the gas motor is fast supplanting wind power. I came back after another irritating inter- view with the steamship people. Not a word of ^ o A-CRUISE ON THE " TIGER " 81 our lost canoe. Hen was much dejected. He denounced Ponce de Leon. His gun had rusted, the camera wouldn't work, and some Cajun had presented hnn with more turtle eggs. Old Man Captain was a curious spectator of Hen's strug- gle with that multi-speed, bifurcated camera. " When you boys get that air machine fixed, I want you to take them dawgs. Them dawgs would make fine scenery. I always did want some of them pictorial pictures." He had riled Hen by asking if he wasn't a barber. " You-all done somehow look like a barber. I used to know a barber out in that Western country." Turtle eggs, rusted gun, camera out of whack, and mistaken for a barber! Hen had lost his illusions a bit. *' Who? " he asked with some asperity, " ever proposed this idea? " " I have forgotten," I answered. " But we're here. But even if it is a lawless country they can't compel you to eat any more turtle eggs. Antoine says there's a boat coming past here 82 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH to-night for the lower lakes. Let's board her and go down. We can just as well wait for our canoe down there as up here. Then we can come back to New Orleans and paddle to Flor- ida when we're notified that it's arrived. The Fountain of Youth, my boy, has never yet run dry!" He waved a rubber-back hair brush at me and was glum. The atmosphere of camp, in fact, was so surcharged that night that I got out an hour before daylight, took Old Man Captain's johnboat and his sawed-off shotgun, and went to the lake. It was a wondrous dawn. I rounded the point past the spot where they will tell you that two slave ships, driven from the Gulf by a British sloop and unable to smuggle their cargoes safely up to the plantation coun- try, were scuttled with their human cargoes bat- tened beneath the hatches, and paddled on south along the sunken shores. The lonely lake was a mirror reflecting the giant cypress, and when I drew the boat into the watery aisles among the mangrove clumps, the damp, sweet breath A-CRUISE ON THE "TIGER" 83 of the swamp was like the perfume of a florist's shop. I landed on the only bit of ground above water, and as I was carefully testing the muck with the butt of the shotgun, a dos gris arose from the grass beyond. And I dropped him, closed season or no. We were done with turtle eggs. And I had understood that the game wardens never invaded the Free State of Bara- taria. I found that black and gray dos gris among the latanier palms and threw him in the john- boat. Then I wandered into the watery wilder- ness back of the first fringe of giant cypress thrusting their grim buttresses up through the black, still water. The plumes of the Spanish moss hung straight from every limb and gave the forest the majestic severity of a cathedral, beyond whose fluted columns one saw the tur- quoise sky. And how the birds sang! Mocking birds and blackbirds, with now and then a car- dinal like a flame through the gray moss stream- ers. On the little hummocky glades flowers were everywhere, white dewberry bloom, a yellow 84 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH flag and a purplish orchid-like blossom, while in all the water spaces the wild hyacinths raised their colorful profusion. Every log and stump was red and yellow mottled with fungi, and from these and the lush grasses and the young palmettoes the water drops sparkled until the whole wet, still forest was brilliant. Still, did I say? Never did one hear such unceasing melody ! And while I was sitting there on a rotted log in the midst of all this loveliness, back on the stern of the johnboat at the lake edge, a parish game warden sat looking down on that poor, anemic no-account duck that had happened to run in the way of my shotgun. I found him there when I went out. We had quite a con- versation. We discussed the Louisiana game laws. I'll never tell you just exactly how we adjudicated the transgression. It concluded with a duck dinner; duck with turnips, Creole style. The warden cooked the duck, drank most of our whiskey, and departed amicably. After all, what is a duck between friends? A-CRUISE ON THE ''TIGER" 85 This is a wholly truthful narrative, so I must confess to the duck, the game warden, the din- ner; and even how Hen swore when he fell over the hound pup and spilled the bacon. Old Man Captain " lammed " the pup. " I sho' got it in for that air dawg, anyhow. He grabbed my eye-glasses and ran out and dropped 'em in the bia, and here I just done got a new almanack off' n that game warden's boat. But I reckon it don't make much differ- ence what time it is." He tried on my glasses, and then Hen's. *' You young fellers oughtn't to be wearin' glasses. I reckon you-all do it just to be in city style." I dozed away a peaceful afternoon under the oaks while Hen and Old Man Captain executed a dance about the pirate's grave trying to obtain a snapshot of the Captain's king snake. They held him up on sticks and he would slide off; they tried to flatten him out on the log and he would wriggle under it, before Hen could get his hifalutin' camera to working. The king snake refused to be " scenery," as the Captain 86 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH had it; and finally crawled in his hole under the log and wiggled a derisive tail at them. Every trapper and cane basket maker passing the bayou witnessed the altercation. It confirmed their suspicions about our sanity; Le Nom de Dieu! For what would any man want a picture of a snake? One of the Adam boys stopped off as we were getting breakfast the next morning and had the inevitable coffee, sitting on his pirogue seat above an unappetizing mess of dead muskrats, as he stirred it. " If you-all want to get down to Little Lake, dat Tiger boat he come along to-day. He tak you-all to Clark CJiemeref* We made further inquiries. We were told the Tiger was again " loaded with lumber and ladies." That was not reassuring, but we de- cided to pull up camp and take a chance. Old Man Captain was grieved. In our two weeks' sojourn with him he had had the first real hu- man companionship in forty years. " Don't know just how I took to you-all." He added: A-CRUISE ON THE ''TIGER" 87 " I sho' hate to have you go away." He went within his frail old shack, fumbled about among the rusty traps and crab nets and came out wilh a battered tin box. From its plunder — old ac- count books of the plantations, dirty twine, al- manacs, match safes, and tobacco crumbs — he took an old German silver watch. There were no works in it, but he gave it to me with a gracious solemnity. " Fo' a keepsake. Had it long befo' I went out in that Western country. I almost give it to the widda woman, but I thought I'd wait till I found the treasure and then give her some jewelry. But I want you boys to have it; and when you come back this hyar bia, mebbe I'll have peas and new 'taters, if the tide don't wash me off'n this Point. And the hound pups'U have better mannehs, and the Cajuns won't pes- ter you with so much turtle eggs." Good Old Man Captain! When the Tiger boat, " loaded with lumber and ladies," came along that evening and wheezed to the bank at our hail and we piled our traps on the lumber 88 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH among the ladies, I felt a keen regret at part- ing. He stood long looking after us, the pups about his feet, in front of his camp, waving a farewell — the simplest, kindliest, most honest soul I ever knew, a soldier and a gentleman. Never once in our intercourse had his courtesy been wanting. When we were packing up and conferring as to what we could leave with him as a parting gift, he went aside with rare tact that we might not be embarrassed in this discus- sion. We had hard work persuading the old Confederate to accept anything, even with his larder at beggary's point : and four months later, when we paddled to his camp, Hen and I dis- covered a little row of soup and tomato cans on his shelf — untouched. " Thought mebbe you boys would get back this way some time, and be short of grub," he smiled. " So I just kept it all for you! " But this evening we left him, and the Tiger boat beat out into a lake of golden light, such a sunset and such a water mirror as might be part of fairyland. Afar was the gray-green A-CIWISE ON THE " TIGER " 89 cypress forest, in the middle distance the yel- low prairie cane, and for all the world like a Northern wheat field. Everywhere we were astonished at this verisimiltude. One seemed to see level fields, well-kept farmsteads, hill ranges and valley depths, and it was hard to believe that it was all lonely and uninhabited swamp wilderness. The Tiger boat throbbed on, turned south and followed the path of the rising moon across the silent lake. For Bayou Perot she was bound, and as Hen and I sat on our luggage on the cabin top, there seemed room for none else, so cluttered up was she with ladies. Also babies, men, mischievous boys, a cargo of boards, gro- ceries, bread in gunny sacks, barrels of red wine, and crab baskets. The Creole girls sat on the tiny foredeck with their feet hanging down, and as the moon grew higher they began singing to the tinkle of a guitar which a dark-eyed boy played from the pilot house top. The Tiger boat made no more than five miles an hour, but no one cared. 90 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH Captain " Jack " Hammond offered whiskey and coffee, refused any passage money, and said he'd take us " somewhere," adding that we ought to go forward and " wiggle round among the ladies." He was glad to acquire us, it seemed, for he was taking them to a " ball " down below, if the boat got there. If not to- night, then to-morrow night — he'd stay over for it. That seemed good. Going somewhere to a ball, if the boat got there, along with a cargo of lumber and ladies. The Tiger boat turned down Bayou Perot, between level fields of marsh grass and water shimmering in the moon. Now and then a hail would come off ahead, above the voices of the singing girls, Jack Ham- mond would bawl to the engine boy, the wheez- ing motor would stop, and a lean-faced muskrat trapper would shoot his pirogue alongside. There would be an animated search among the ladies and lumber for some stuff he had ordered, someone would toss down a few loaves of bread out of the gunny sacks, and on we would go. A'CRUISE ON THE "TIGER" 91 Now and then one of the trappers would hang alongside for a mile and drink whiskey with the skipper; and at Point Legarde, we waited an hour while crew, Captain, guests, and natives argued the price of catfish. Indeed, so late was it by now that the girls began to clamor about the " ball." "M'sieu Jack, we sho' never go down with this Tiger boat again. You-all ain't a-goin' to get anywhere till mawnin'." That was exactly what happened. It was long after midnight when the Tiger boat reached Clark Cheniere. By that time the fid- dler and the guitar player had absorbed so much of the Tiger boat's liquid cargo that they were asleep on top of the lumber, and the girls climbed down in a skiff and were sent ashore with many a tart comment on Jack Hammond's dilatory schedule. They had cast many a curi- ous glance at the two strangers sitting on the duffle sacks amidships, but to Captain Jack's repeated invitations to " go mix with the girls " we had been reluctantly inclined. The bayou 92 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH girls were coy. The skiff load put off and dis- appeared into the fringe of shadows above a white, gleaming shell bank, which was all we could see of the Cheniere. Then Hen and I rolled in our blankets and slept face up to the moon, with the pleasant voices of the island girls coming over the water. Very romantic, you say. But the Tiger boat had many sorts of ants and bugs and all of these came for'ard to take the strangers in. CHAPTER V THE OLD STO BALLS THE next morning we took in Clark Che- niere. We had to get out early, for the entire population came in skiffs and pi- rogues and climbed on board. We made coffee on top of the lumber with many comments from the sjDectators. Everybody knew us. The tale had spread. The soft-voiced Creoles fingered our camp gear and discussed our khaki trousers. They plied the Tiger boat crew with questions about us. To us they were courteously shy, but curious; so much so that finally we asked Jack Hammond if we could not be put ashore and find a camp in some spot more secluded than the village street, which seemed to be all there was to Clark Chenlere. It was merely a dozen un- painted houses straggling along the white shells 93 94 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH facing the open roadstead where a score of lug- gars and a few gasoline boats lay. Among these house yards a few great oak trees arose, and beyond them stretched the illimitable salt prai- rie. Far above this and the seemingly shoreless open water to the south one saw other oak groves (cJienieres) . That was all except the blue water and the bluer sky. A few silent groups of seine menders and crab fishers baiting their lines squatted under the china berry bushes and mangroves. From one of the watery lanes leading from the marsh to the backyards of the row of houses came a soli- tary rat trapper. We heard the harsh cry of a rail from the salt pools, and snipe were running on the beaches at each end of the habitable shore. We idled among the groups all morning long. A shy, curious people of indecipherable blood — Chino-Italian, Filipino, Spanish, Creole, Indian, renegade Irish, or American. The sun had put the same swarthy touch to all, and years of con- tact had fused their speech to that droll dialect of the Cajun, which is more like the tongue of the tough slums of the Northern towns than any- THE OLD STO' BALLS 95 thing else. " Dis," " dat," " fadder," " modder," — that was what we heard from them all, regard- less of blood-type. In front of each house, drawn up on the shell beach, were their pirogues. Trapping in winter, shrimp hauling in summer, selling the catch to the little gasoline boats which chugged down from the river weekly — this was their round of life. The gray houses seemed forlorn and un- tenanted, the glassless windows barred. A bare- footed, dark-skinned woman peered furtively at us as we passed, and children played among the rotted hulks of ancient luggars drawn on the beach. In each yard was a charcoal furnace on which the cooking was done, and this was usually shaded by a palm thatch or a grass plait. There was a water famine imminent, for the April skies had been cloudless for some weeks and the only fresh water within sixty miles of the Cheniere was that caught in the cisterns from the roofs. Hen and I put up our little silk tent on the gleaming shells just around a point from the village. To eastward swept broad Bayou St. 96 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH Denis, winding on through salt marshes to Bara- taria Bay and then the Gulf. Across were " Africa," " John-the-Fool," " Des Amoureaux," " Old Cheniere," each a lonely camp of the hardy, island people who, for a century have defied the Gulf hurricanes and clung to their frail homes. There was very little land within miles that rose more than twenty inches above the Gulf tides, and when the sou'easters blow the natives gather about their boats, for few there are who do not have tragic memories in their families of the storms that destroyed Che- niere Caminada with its twelve hundred souls, or the Last Island hurricane, which Lafcadio Hearn celebrated in his story of " Chita." But this April the waters were very blue and still. Hen and I gathered a few twigs and grass stalks and built a fire for the evening meal. We were at it when we heard a soft clatter among the shells and two shy, brown-eyed boys came through the mangroves. They came to invite us to the " Ball," and, having delivered the mes- sage, retreated precipitately. THE OLD STO' BALLS 97 We wandered around the shell point to the village when the big, full moon was rising. Long before we reached the china berry grove we heard the tinkle of the guitars. It seemed that all the islanders had met at the " new sto'," kept by Juan Rojas, a Filipino-Italian, the village head- man, and were waiting for us, who were, after a fashion, the guests of honor. At least after our arrival the folk formed in an impromptu pro- cession and down the street-beach we v/ent, the guitar players and the fiddler, still tipsily uncer- tain of his feet, leading the way. It was a won- drous night. The perfume of magnolias and of the fig and orange trees was in the soft air. The luggars, their red sails furled, hung at anchor off the beach, and here and there as we passed their laughing crews joined our parade. Men and women, girls with magnolia buds in their hair, boys in painful celluloid collars, babies hanging to mothers' skirts — on we went. The ball was in the " old sto '," and five smoky lanterns lit the rough floor. A languid young fellow was peeling a candle over the boards, and 98 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH at the far end two kegs of beer were on the coun- ter. The fiddler and the guitar players were soon ensconced beside them, and without cere- mony began a waltz. The floor manager was a son of old Rojas, a handsome, dark-faced youth who wore a baby-blue shirt, yellow pants with stripes of pink and purple — such pants as never yet you've seen — and as a badge of authority a huge red rose wrapped in tin foil about the stem. He informed me that his sweetheart had brought it for him from a Bayou Perot camp, and that she had tended it all spring. The younger folks were whirling over the rude floor in no time. The elders and the round-eyed Creole and Filipino children sat about the old sto' counters, the door was jammed with an en- tranced crowd of music lovers, the beer keg had its adherents, and the ball was on. Little girls of nine with blackberry bloom about their necks danced with solemn, swarthy-faced fishers, and between numbers wandered hand in hand out to the gallery where the live oaks threw their shad- ows athwart the shells. Along with the droning THE OLD STO' BALLS 99 of the guitars and violin I heard the splashing of the giant gars in the roadstead and the soft lap of the waves under the luggars' bows. Every harsh, crude outline of the Cheniere was hidden in the magic of the moon — a night of quiet beauty, of adolescent mirth and faraway charm. It was hard to believe one was still in Amer- ica. Not even the midnight lunch of sto' bread, sausage, shrimp, and beer, with the bemused fiddler trying to make us a belated speech of wel- come, could take away from the entrancement. The younger folk had become shyly acquainted with us ; the girls out in the gallery giggled and commented in their queer hybrid tongue. Hen tried some of his college French on them with disastrous results; they and their brown-armed young men laughed. Then the old fiddler and his assistants fell to the music-making. How long the ball went on I do not know. Hen and I wandered quietly off down the shell beach at two o'clock and crawled in our tent. But afar, through the wondrous night, I still heard the guitars. 100 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH We came " down town " late the next day. And, much to our surprise, we were told that there was another ball on that afternoon and night. In fact, as Captain Jack Hammond said, there would be one continual ball as long as the islanders could detain the fiddler and keep him sober enough to play. The unfortunate mu- sicians were at it again at three P. M., and with two hours' intermission for supper the ball went on into another night of dreamy revelry. The Tiger boat stayed in port. " These people, they don't hear music often," said Captain Jack genially, " and long as the beer holds out we'll stick around." I now understood the Tiger boat's schedule. If you stayed by her long enough you would get "somewhere." However, Hen and I were so pleased with the Cheniere, and, besides, had no particular place to go, that we told Captain Jack we would remain. And the next morning, three " balls " having been crowded into her thirty-eight hours' stay in port, the Tiger boat got away for somewhere. They carried Sim and THE OLD STO' BALLS 101 the two guitar men on board. Some of the ladies went out and perched again on the lumber. But some of them decided to stay. Perhaps they hoped to catch another orchestra before night- fall. " We-all could just dance all week," said one fair damsel (not so fair, either, now I remem- ber), "but dat Tiger boat, he take Sim down to Manila. If you-all stay 'round maybe we get a man to fiddle off dat Hazel boat when he come tnex' week." We-all assured the fair-dark one we-all would stay. Not that we were so mightily taken with sto' balls, but the Cheniere was interesting. We lounged with the fishers under the china berry trees and at the sto'. We learned that Juan Rojas, the Malay head-man, had been on the island for forty-five years ; he had deserted from a Spanish merchantman in New Orleans and fled to the swamps, and this, we found, was the gen- eral vague history of the Chino-Malasian peo- ples of Barataria. Rojas had married an Italian woman and his handsome sons showed the breed 102 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH had not been in vain. The young men wandered Sunday morning along the beach, giving oranges to their perfumed sweethearts. In the afternoon they got up another ball ! That is, they waltzed without music, but to a great clattering of feet on the sto' boards. At the upper end of the beach was a typical colony of the Gulf coast lakes, a seine company whose luggars were shrimp catching in the lower waters. The six men of the seine company had been brought down from New Orleans under the promise of making from four to ten dollars a day by holding a share in the company. They were a forlorn lot, barefooted, ragged, in debt to the sto' and unable to get away. We had heard many tales of peonage down in the " Free State." This was an instance. The men had been advanced a few dollars and plenty of whiskey and now, no matter how they toiled at the seine, they seemed unable to pay for it. No boat would take them away. Two who tried to walk north through the illimitable marsh were lost, and when the boss went after them with a shotgun THE OLD STO' BALLS 103 and a skiff they were glad to get back to the Cheniere. In the evening we were approached by two bronzed young Germans who crept under the mangroves to our tent and told their troubles. They were educated young Teutons, but spoke little English. Otto had been to school eight years in Posen; Paul was a tanner of Darm- stadt. They had shipped to come to America and deserted on the New Orleans levees. Wan- dering about the city, they had come on a man who told them of the money to be made in the Barataria shrimp camps. They wanted to get on to Kansas, where Paul's sister lived, but had only the vaguest idea where Kansas was. So they came down on a bayou boat to Clark's and entered the seine crew. Each man had a share, the Captain a share, the boat a share, the seine a share, and the Cap- tain's wife a share for doing the cooking. All expenses were shared proportionally, but when it came to profits the fishers were at the Cap- tain's mercy, for he alone took the catch to New 104. THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH Orleans each week, and, as Otto put it, " Mostly it's two dollars and forty cents in debt to him we are. Someway our accounts run all the wrong way, and we owe the boss eighty dollars, he says. And we no shoes, no money; and no boat will take us off the island if the boss says no. Ach^ is dis a free country, dis America we come to? " The work was hard. The seine company was out at four in the morning, the men wading to their necks to draw the shrimp seines. Break- fast came at ten o'clock, although the usual coffee had been served on rising. Bean stew with chunks of pork fat, bread, and coffee was the breakfast. Otto said that dinner was the same, except that the beans were white instead of red! The crew complained that, though every man paid for it, the fare at the boss's camp was far better than the crew's. And a favored man or two ate at the boss's table — there was always a favored lieutenant who helped outvote the seine haulers. " Here's Irish John, he never eats with us. And dey had ham and butter and cheese on the THE OLD STO' BALLS 105 Captain's table, too. And last week the Cap- tain's wife made a cake and all the island women came to eat it — and we pay for dat cake!" Paul's hopeless wrath was almost comical. *' We pay for clothes and beds and oil and repairs to dat seine, and last week we send up a hundred hands of fish and sixty baskets of shrimp. It ought to be worth a hundred dollars, but the boss he come back and say: ' Boys, we lose forty dollars on dat catch! ' " The two German lads went on with their griev- ances. We made them sit at our campfire and have supper. " Every time dat Tiger boat come to the Cheniere we have a ball," went on the castaway, " dance and have some beer ! Dat's to keep the men from getting ugly, but we never get out of debt." (Since our sojourn there, the Federal Gov- ernment, let me add, has interfered in the Bara- taria peonage and has sent one of the ** Big Chino " bosses and proprietor of a shrimp camp to the penitentiary. It is now well broken up.) Paul and Otto spoke with contempt of their 106 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH fellow-workmen. In all matters of company di- vision the men were so ignorant that computa- tions were made by counting beans. *' So many beans, so many dollars," added Paul. "Achy and dose people look down on us!" I think that hurt them worst of all. The Chino-Italian, Malay-Cajun polyglot fishermen looked down on these two sturdy, clean-blooded lads of the North! I asked them why they did not appeal to their consul in New Orleans by letter, and Otto shrugged with a smile. They were deserters! And they had come to be Americans, but free men. We condoled as best we might — and gave them some of our provisions. Otto begged us not to appear too friendly to them when in the village. So we met the boys the next day, when all the younger men were kicking a rude foot- ball down the beach, the weather being too squally for the fishers to go out. Otto was the gayest of them all — he raced and yelled and out- kicked them in sheer excess of youth. Despite their lot they were the merriest, carefree adven- THE OLD STO' BALLS 107 turers I ever met. Paul came up to me and whispered: *' Anodder ball to-night 1 And more beans — red ones dis time!" When we went down to their camp among the alligator pears and scraggly palms later, Otto was making the marooned men roar by mimicking the Captain's wife. He wore a sprig of china-berry bloom in his hat and took it off to hold out to us, while Paul held aloft a card- board smeared with red beans: "Help the Poor!" The island girls came — five of them — to our camp and invited us to the ball. They had got a fiddler from John-the-Fool Island. And an- other night of dancing. The next day they began again at ten in the morning. *' Dat music he won't stay long," explained the fair one. Hen and I attended — and also a sixth ball the fol- lowing night. The entire population was laid out after that. The last ball was at a residence, and the guests assisted at moving out the furniture to make room for the fete. The next day we heard 108 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH the host lamenting that no one was around to help move it back. So it stayed outside a week, and the family ate in the shade of the china berry tree and looked at their dismantled domicile. I asked one of them if I could not assist in moving the stuff in. "Oh, sho', Man!" said he. "Let dat furni- ture stay out. Dat Coqiiille boat, she come along nex' Saturday, and mebbe we catch some more music fo' a ball." Happy island! Since we left there Clark Cheniere has been battered and riven by hurri- cane, its oaks twisted ; and its houses lean on their foundations along the white shell beach. But I doubt not that the simple, hardy lake folk are still watching to *' catch more music." CHAPTER VI BLACKBERRY ROMANCE YOUNG ROJAS limped down to the beach the next day and confided to me, " Dis spohtin' life, it's too much. But if I was in N'Awlyins I'd be a spoht. I'd like to travel round and spend fo' or five dollehs a day jes' like a millionaire!" Madame Rojas had, in her room behind the Store, a tiny altar and the pictures of the Sta- tions of the Cross about the walls. Now and then a priest called at the Cheniere, she ex- plained, and they had it " fixed up " for him. The only other evidence of the higher life was the school. It was closed. The two pupils had gone to New Orleans for Easter! The master wandered disconsolately about. He was a quer- 109 no THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH ulous and broken-down fiddler, not at all pop- ular because he refused to fiddle for the balls. He told me that the heads of families were sup- posed to pay a dollar a month for the school, but after the first few months nobody paid, so the school always closed sooner or later. " Anyhow," he added, " why do they need to read and write ? They are the happiest and most carefree people on the earth, I do believe. When I first landed here I used to scold 'em. But no- body cared. Just listen to those children play- ing on the beach. Their parents won't pay and I can't make 'em pay. And will you tell me what tongue they are talking? It isn't French — it isn't English — it isn't Spanish, nor Filipino. Whatis it?" We left that cadaverous pedagogue bewail- ing. The islanders looked on him as somewhat " cracked," I believe. We got more insight into social customs. We had wondered at the many Yankee names of the people until it was ex- plained. They — the Browns and Smiths — were all corruptions from some other tongues. ** Bar- BLACKBERRY ROMANCE 111 onne," for instance, had become " Brown." We were confused also by the island habit of calling all women by the first names of their husbands. The wife of Francisco Vasquez was not only Mrs. Vasquez, but also Mrs. Francisco. And they all had nicknames, too, so when we went to buy bread, or call on someone, we had no end of confusion finding the exact person wanted. Clark Cheniere would drive a census-taker crazy. The next day a sou'easter blew which mauled the shell beach until it shook. Hen and I had a task holding our tent pegs down. By sunset the whole curve of the shore was a rolling carpet of pink and blue and white shells lifted up and flung musically at our feet and washed back to come in on the next surge. The next morning the shore line was entirely changed, the shells being piled in long reefs far over the green, marsh. It was still breezy. Hen and I had a hard time getting breakfast. There was no fuel ex- cept the flimsy weed drift. It kept one of us 112 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH busy holding the fire down under the irons while the other made coffee and boiled the oatmeal. Half a dozen times we had to chase that fire down the beach, bring back the remnants, and start all over again. It enlarged our vocabulary immensely. The sou'easter belhed the little tent tight as a drum, and the pegs threatened to pull from the shells. Finally we dropped it, lit our pipes, and wandered up the beach around the oak point to see what our friends of the Che- niere were doing. " Probably making another ball," said Hen. " Balls and turtle eggs — they're getting on my nerves. But what a morning — wow ! I feel like my hair was growing in again. Whoof ! " But the festive populace was resting. The schoolmaster was sitting on a crab boat gazing northward, whence the school should reappear. Juan Rojas smoked on his sto' gallery and watched his sons paint a boat. The luggars rode at their moorings and the fishers slept under the china trees. A pirogue man came in from the marshes behind the Cheniere with a few teal and We (lug throiigl) tlic amv to the swamp. BLACKBERRY ROMANCE 113 dos gris and turtles, and the children gathered about. But all day the lazy island dozed in the sun and breeze. Hen decided to try his tarpon gear at gar fishing, and this becoming noised about, the entire population gathered at the pier. The islanders smiled — catch a gar on that foolish little line and rod? Le noin de Dieu — what would these Yankees try next? " I'll show 'em," growled Hen grimly, and he cast prettily off the pier head and threshed the surf. He had a rise or two, and then, while I was in the sto', I heard a series of wild yells. I discovered Hen fighting his way along the pier among the natives. He had hooked something all right. Presently a big gar charged out of water, then straight seaward. The line swung out; the natives gazed. No line would hold an alligator gar! Hen watched his reel anxiously. Then finally he turned the big fish, played him back, stopped a rush or two, and the islanders gasped. The gar was tiring — and he hadn't broken the "jigger rod"! Round about the pier head the big fellow 114 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH threshed, with Hen holding in and trying to keep him seaward. But finally, as he was grinning triumphantly at the astonished natives, the gar made a last exhausted rush under the pier, whipped about a piling, and — well, Hen groaned ! But I heard another yell. Out from the shore charged a swarthy Manilaman. He carried a club and, dashing into the surf, he began maul- ing Hen's gar over the head. Into the water swarmed every boy on the island, and when Hen discomfitedly reeled in the remainder of his line the islanders were carrying a six-foot gar in procession to the beach. It was a woeful finish to a gallant fight. Hen was wrathful. *' Con- found the muckers ! I'd rather the fish got away than have 'em club it to death. They're no sportsmen! " They were not. Just why a man should want to catch a gar was beyond them. " Dat fish no good, M'sieu ! He mek no gumbo, no cou'bouil- lion — no nuttin' ! " " I'm going to fry him ! " growled Hen. BLACKBERRY ROMANCE 115 They scratched their heads. No telling what a Yankee would do I Paul and Otto came with us and we lugged that horny-hided fish to camp. The boys spent half a day trying to scale him and whack off the tough yellow meat. He was as palatable as a paper box. The next morning a shy youngster clothed in a shirt made of a flour sack came to camp. He invited us to go blackberrying. Blackberries! Where? I gazed about the watery wilderness. The lad dived off in the bush without giving us details. Hen concluded he would stay in camp and repair his tackle and digestion after that gar supper of last night. But I went to the village with visions of wandering down some bosky dell with a tin pail and a — a girl. You know, if you're of the North or East. Sort of a cow- pasture romance with blackberry flavor. But when I reached Clark's a good-sized gaso- line stern-wheeler rocked at the pier, and all the adolescent population of the island was waiting for me. There were buckets all right, and girls, 116 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH too — and children and babies and rollicking young men, and we chugged away across the blue water with chatter and smiles. In a minute a charcoal fire was going for coffee on the aft deck roof, and they got out loaves of bread. Jo Rojas beckoned me into the tiny pilot house. He placed the wheel in my hands and pointed to a dim blur on the horizon. *' Hoi' her der'," he announced and disappeared in the crowded freight hold. I steered vaguely on, the slap-slap of the paddle-wheel and the laughter of the excursion- ists coming to my ears. A good-sized sea was kicking up off the roadstead and presently the spray was flying over the fore decks and into the pilot-house windows. She rolled a good bit on the course, so I held more southerly, still keeping my eyes on " der'," as directed. But " der' " seemed a long way off. We pounded on half an hour, and I wondered why I wasn't relieved or given further sailing directions. I could see no one. Apparently they were all below in the freight hold, for the chatter was more subdued. BLACKBERRY ROMANCE 117 The seas pounded up, and presently I brought about so as to fetch the place which I now made out as an oak-covered point with the marsh behind it. I cleared my eyes of the suds and stared down. At times the sandy bot- tom heaved up uncomfortably near and I saw a shark or two, but no blackberries. As I fetched up under the lee the shoals spread wider. I grew alarmed and began to pound on the rear wall, for the signal cord did not get response. And the mauling engine probably defeated my efforts. Then, when a bar seemed to shut off further progress, I brought the tub about and out to sea, dropped the wheel, and ran aft along the running-board. The hold was battened tight, but I kicked and scratched at the side hatch. " Hey, you! What's the matter? Where are we going? " Then I yanked the door open. I stared down. Honest, every youth in the lot was hug- ging a girl — everyone in the lot! And every baby had its face smeared with flies and mo- lasses from ear to ear. 118 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH ** Hey, you ! '* I roared. " Where the devil do you want this boat to go? " And while that syrup-smeared court of Venus stared back at me, the boat hit bottom with an awful wallop. It all but put me off. A barrel of water soused over and onto those Cupids and Adonises and Venuses. Jo Rojas floundered over them and to the deck. I was back at the wheel by that time. Jo grabbed a pole and began to swear at the enamored ones who poked their heads out. " San Sebastino! Push 'er head round I Git 'er round, you-all ! " They heaved and pried while the waves bumped us harder on. But finally we were bumped clear over the bar into better water and Jo threw an anchor. He wiped his brow. " By Gar, dat some smash ! Git yo' buckets, you-all, and git asho'." It was some smash. The babies were yowling and rubbing molasses onto their bumped heads, and the damsels were scolding. But we got ashore with expedition, the skiff taking a load BLACKBERRY ROMANCE 119 and the rest jumping in and wading. Then, with gurgles and shrieks of joy, they fell on the blackberries, which grew in a half curve under the scrub of oaks, latanier palms, and prickly pears. They were big and black and luscious. Once in a while some busy picker would yell and We would assemble to kill a black moccasin. Once a small boy disappeared from sight in the thicket and after much trouble was pulled out of a deep hole. " Yo' be careful of dem hide-ups," warned Jo. "Dem or pirates done dig this beach all to pieces.'* I looked into the hole. It was an excavation. There were four of them along the overgrown beach. I concluded that they had been dug in search of La Fitte's fabled treasure, as had the holes in the Salvador beaches on the upper lakes, but Jo insisted that the pirates had dug them. We had gallons and gallons of berries in no time. Also many red bugs. Everyone was rub- bing and scratching when we got back to the boat. Jo came to me rather embarrassed when 120 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH we got over the bar. " Will } ou-all steer dis boat home? We-all a-goin' to jolly dem girls some. We-all clean fo'got you comin' oveh. We bring yo' some coffee dis time." I agreed. By this time the CJieniere Cupids had added a layer of blackberry jam to their syrupped countenances and the freight hold was not a delectable place. The lovers did not seem to mind. I suppose, however, that if one is going to be loved one may as well sit in black- berry jam as out of it. A fellow could hold his girl with one hand and scratch red bugs with the other. I brought that sticky cargo of Eros home safe enough. It was dark when I came to camp with a pail of mushy berries. Hen and his dyspepsia were sitting by the fire fighting mosquitoes. "By Golly," he commented, "if I'd been there I'd have wrecked the whole smear! They wouldn't have spooned on mef There is a man with no poetry in his soul. Sto' balls, girls, turtle eggs, love, blackberry jam — nothing touched him. It will be a long The cypress reflect tlieir beauty from the swamp lakes. BLACKBERRY ROMANCE 121 back-track to the Fountain of Youth for him, I'm thinking. But for me — why, I felt appre- ciably more hair than I had had in the morning. Hen, with his sardonic levity, concluded that what I felt was molasses and blackberry smear. However, I let it go. There is little use in ar- guing on the higher tilings with a man who will try to eat an alligator gar. We inquired further into local history. In the last yellow fever epidemic — 1904 — fifty-five of the ninety-two inhabitants of the Cheniere had it. It scourged every house in the village, but only three had died. A beach character called " Red " had a peculiar story to relate of one instance he knew. " Der was wan bad modder. She had feveh and she let her baby suck dat poison all out from her breast. Dat baby, he die, but dat modder, she get well. I sho' wouldn't be any modder like dat." The Hazel boat brought two more men down. We talked with them and found they were typi- cal " 'bos '* w^ho had beat their way to 'New Or- leans by rail and had taken a levee captain's 122 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH word that wondrous riches were to be made in the shrimp fishing. But they stood on the wharf that first day and eyed the seine company strug- gling with its net out beyond the gentle surf with great disfavor. The men were warily dodging the great stingrays that had become entangled in the seine, and the hungry sharks following to seize the dead and escaping fish made the water boil around the luggar. One of the 'bos had gingerly tried to assist hauling, but hastily clambered out, despite the seine cap- tain's swearing. " I don't cotton to this game a whole lot," he remarked. I never did love fish, anyhow.'* The boss told me later he would ship the 'bos back to the city. They would only spread dis- content among his crew if he kept them, grant- ing that they might be induced to work. I met them lonesomely sitting on the beach at dark, slapping mosquitoes. They asked what we were doing down in Barataria, and when we said we were on a pleasure trip they roared with laughter. BLACKBERRY ROMANCE 123 " Pal, you got some new ideas of pleasure ! I never see such a layout since I been on the road." We were at the schoolmaster's the next morn- ing, idling a beautiful Sunday over coffee and conversation, discussing the mystery of our lost canoe, of which no word had come on the Hazel, when one of the oddest men I ever saw came in. He was a wiry, wrinkled, coffee-colored little bundle of mingled animation and shyness, ges- ticulating and interrupting as the pedagogue translated his nervous speech to us. He was Allesjandro, sailing master of a sloop that had come in from Cutler's Island. Cutler's Island was the home of Baron Von Gaal, the owner of the sloop and a person of note. The schoolmas- ter enlarged on the Baron and it caught our fancy. The Baron was an expatriated Austrian gen- tleman, who had fought in the Civil War, made a fortune in New Orleans in the lottery, lost it, and retired to a bit of Eden in lower Barataria. Allesjandro was his major-domo, and a more 124 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH loyal never served. He couldn't say enough about the Baron, the garden, the oysters, the fishing at Cutler's, and wound up with a pro- found bow and an invitation to visit his master's domain. Hen looked up with the first show of interest since he ate the alligator gar. "Some class! Us for Cutler's I" " But we started for Florida," I argued — ** and the Fountain " " Right-O. But we can't walk. I've given up the canoe — the railroad people are hopeless. There's a Manilaman up the beach who offered to sell a pirogue. Let's buy it and start some- where and wind up at the Baron's." That seemed uncertain enough to be enticing. We had heard a deal about the country across the chain of lakes to the west. Clear days a dim line of forest showed above the water. Allesjandro offered to take us over in the sloop if we bought the pirogue. We all went to see it. Allesjandro knew the former owner — one Juli- ano, also a Manilaman, He vouched that it was a bargain at ten dollars. BLACKBERRY ROMANCE 125 We looked it over. It was sadly unlike the beautiful sea-going canoe we had ordered from Old Town, Maine. Thirteen feet long, twenty- eight inches wide, hewed from a single cypress log, yet it was a deal more seaworthy than the usual trapper's dugouts. It had a decked space fore and aft and a bit of coaming to ward off the splash. We looked at it, estimated our pile of dunnage, and then I tried it out and was swamped trying to get about the point to camp. Hen ran along the point yelling advice, which was good, seeing that he had never been in a pirogue in his life. But Allesjandro was full of praise. I pounded up through the surf to camp. Juliano, Allesjandro, and Hen formed a re- ception committee and shook my dripping hand. " Good old scout ! " congratulated Hen — "you only capsized once, didn't you?" That was unnecessary. However, Juliano and Allesjandro made it up. I was " wan great beeg pirogue man." I could go anywhere in safety — around the world, or to Mawgan City, or anywhere. Old Juliano was touched at the 126 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH thought of parting with his lake pirogue. It was named Bantayan, after his native town in ^lindanao, and positively he must weep when he thought of selling it. Yet he would — for ten dollars. But only to distinguished strangers like ourselves, " Well, I don't think we can lose — for ten dollars," said Hen. " Only we'll be taking some awful chances with all our duffle in that thirteen-foot coffin. But we can't stay ma- rooned here all summer." So we bought the Bantayan — ^with misgiv- ings, I assure you. That was the beginning of many episodes. We had much to learn. There is much to relate. We never dreamed that this little green, red, and yellow painted log of cy- press was to be our home for close to four months, nor that we should come to love it. I shall tell of just one instance of that. I recall that over in a Belle River camp Hen and I thought of renaming our dugout. Hen said Bantayan was barbarous. So we thought and thought. Once I had a girl named Ethel. BLACKBERRY ROMANCE 127 Once Hen had a girl named Sadie. That was long ago, when we had more hair. So I proposed that we christen the pirogue Ethel. " No," said Hen, " Sadie." I insisted on Ethel. Hen stuck out for Sadie. And we wrangled all day and all night and some the next day. We were amazed at our chivalry. I had never imagined it in a man who would turn up his nose at turtle eggs as Hen did. But, as I said, we quarreled over the christening;, with a little pot of black paint there all ready to slap on, and a bottle of beer to break over her bow, first carefully removing the beer from the bottle. Finally we hit a happy compromise. The Bant ay an was a boat with her stern just like her bow, low, sharp, rakish. A stranger could not have told one from the other, for she would paddle either way. So I named the bow end, where T paddled, " Ethel," and Hen named the stern "Sadie." Ethel was painted on her port bow and Sadie on her starboard quarter. She 128 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH was Ethel to all the folks on the left bank, and Sadie to all those on the right. That was fine, I recall, for a time, until once we got into a walloping big whirl that took us around and around so that we couldn't tell whether it was Ethel going upstream or Sadie coming down. That rapid gave us such a scare that Hen proposed we recant and go back to our original name. *' Say," he began when we had got ashore and in camp, " I never was so much gone on that girl, anyhow. I just stuck out for Sadie be- cause you said Ethel. Darn their pelts, let's cut 'em all and be virtuous and refined." " Old top," I rejoined, "I'm right with you. One girl is bad enough, but two! How could that boat get through without being wrecked? She's a fine little scow, and Bantayan's her name!" We went right down there to the bank with brotherly accord and scraped those two girls off, for'ard and aft, with our pancake flipper. So Bemtayan she was once more, and we 13 O cS &£ BLACKBERRY ROMANCE 129 breathed freer, and sailed gayer, and slept sounder, and our hair grew quicker, taller, bushier — it was fine spring weather for hair. But to go back. Allesjandro said the seas were too big to tackle in our craft. When we had loaded our stuff on the sloop and got away from the roadstead, leaving all the islanders staring amazedly at the celerity with which Yankees did things when they made up their minds, the lake was rolling with whitecaps. The little pirogue floundered and filled at the towline and Hen and I looked down at it with some misgivings. " Brilliant idea number twenty-two," mur- mured Hen. "Did you propose this or did I? " Allesjandro added the comforting after- thought that the Cheiiiere people all said we would certainly be drowned if we tried to cross to Bayou des Amoureaux with such a load in our pirogue. However, with the public eye on us now we wouldn't have backed out if we could. The doughty little Manilaman towed our pirogue across the lake and up under an oak- 130 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH grown point of the far shore. The short, choppy seas of the great, shallow lake were mean to handle in getting ashore with our luggage. It took two loads to make it, and then Allesjandro waved adieu from his sloop and left us. We sat down on our stuff piled on the beach, looked at that gay red and green and yellow log which was to transport us through the coast wilderness and mentally asked: "What next?" The lake shores were entirely impassable. Everywhere from the narrow shell reef the bot- tomless salt swamp hemmed us in. On the other side the seas pounded, the sou'easter eating large holes in the shell bank and rushing through in threatening fashion. " I'm not sure that this looks good," said Hen. *' Which way do you think is the best out of this hole? Did you find out just where the bayou ran out of the swamp? " " No. I thought you did that." " Blessed if I did ! Man, we've got to get over this habit of merely going somewhere with- out any idea of how we can set out of it." BLACKBERRY ROMANCE 131 " If this sea keeps rising," I retorted, " I know blamed well how we'll get out of it. Well shin up one of these dinky oaks and hang on for a week — and there isn't a camp or a human being on this side the lake, they said ; or a foot of safe land till we hit Bayou La Fourche." " It's fine weather," murmured Hen — " for ducks." CHAPTER VII THE SNAKES OF BAYOU l'oURSE WE made a most beautiful camp in the oak grove, and when the moon drew up above the dancing waves and struck that curve of shells, and we had supped on coffee and blackberry smash spread on our hot biscuits, and had had a smoke, lying on our blankets, we felt fit for any game. We were hungry after that hard day's work, and still more tired, and slept like tramps. The gale blew all the next day and we could see nothing except a luggar hauling up from the great bay into the lakes for safety behind the points. We had planned to start at dawn along the west shore, but it was another day before we made it. There was a deal of trouble packing the pirogue. We had two duffles, the tent roll, a 132 SNAKES OF BAYOU UOURSE 133 general plunder sack, the kitchen kit and re- flector baker, camera, guns, and tackle, besides our blanket rolls and bars, and to batten all this down below the coaming of the thirteen-foot dugout took a lot of compromising. We threw away some stuff, but kept the sail poles and can- vas that we had bought with the pirogue. Just what use we would make of them was uncertain, for when she was loaded and we paddled out of the cove, there were not two inches of freeboard, and we had to sit high on our luggage to work her along. I was bow stroke and Hen was steering. It was gingerish picking for a few miles, as the seas still flung up along the marsh shore, but by ten o'clock we turned into a broad bayou which we concluded was Des Amoureaux and was supposed to take us to La Fourche woods. We drew on into a brilliant prairie covered with yellow and white and purple flowers, out of this into a swampy little lake, into another bayou, another lake, and on another slow-mov- ing stream. The banks of the whole country 134 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH were barely above water, and it was five o'clock when we neared the blue wall of woods. At sunset we were paddling through the big cy- press with here and there a cane brake, which made it hard to follow the channel. The chan- nel, in fact, began to shoal off into mere mud flats of lilies and scrub palmettoes, and we looked anxiously for a camping spot. It had been a fine day's paddling and the Bantai/an had stood up nobly. A canvas canoe would have been ripped to pieces by the needle- like spikes of the cypress through which we shoved the pirogue without danger. But the prospect of spending the night in the swamp was not pleasing. The gloom of the forest brought the nightfall quickly. But presently a light showed under the heavy festoons of the moss. Hen gave an exultant yell: " Land-Hol And I smell coffee I " We drew up beside a palmetto shack. A Cajun woman came around the mud- walled chimney with a frightened glance at us. But SNAKES OF BAYOU L'OUBSE 135 we reassured her and asked the way. Her hus- band was a hunter of wild cattle and was off in the lower swamps. She said it was three miles to Bayou La Fourche, where there were plantations, but we could not get there by water. Des Amoureaux lost itself in the cypress here- about. We made a hasty camp, hanging our bars to a broken-down wagon tongue, drank fresh milk with our cold biscuit, and rolled in. Crepelle, the cowboy, was home for breakfast, and a most excellent breakfast he asked us to — braised duck, rice and sour cream, and bread. His wife was a Portuguese, he told us. We had added another to our polyglot collection of the nations of Barataria! As Crepelle was sure we could not get through the swamp, Hen decided to go out with him in search of some way of portaging our dugout to La Fourche. His father, a genial old alligator hunter, came to camp later. He thought we might follow a stream that led to Bayou L'Ourse and get to open water some miles below. The Gulf was rising, he said, and 136 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH on a good tide the big woods might be traversed. On his advice we waited over a day, anxiously measuring the black water as it crept up to the rude little wharf of poles in front of the palm hut. The Crepelles told us many stories of alli- gator hunting and of the raids against the wild cattle of the swamps. They had never been able to reach many of them until this spring, with its unusually high tides, had let the water-cowboys into their haunts. This was the highest land we had seen since leaving the Mississippi, and when a wagon and ox team jogged in over the trail along the ridge it was really a novelty after wandering in the wet forests and sunken lake shores of Barataria. The elder Crepelle had a never-ceasing child's wonder at our stories of the world outside, and at our patented camp paraphernalia. He was full of ''Mo7i Dieus" and ''Eli-Hos" and " Ho-ees" and comical but pathetic apologies for the rudeness of their living. But never did we meet more genuine hospitality. In fact, the SNAKES OF BAYOU UOURSE 137 finest memory of all our sojourns is the unfail- ing courtesy and shy but eager welcome with which the swamp Cajuns met us everywhere. The next morning's tide had risen little. Hen set off on the ox trail with the younger man to reach the plantation country and bargain for some means of portage to Bayou La Fourche. I slept in my blankets an hour longer and then, while waiting for Crepelle's breakfast, conclud- ed to take the pirogue and see if I could not really shove her into the forest and explore the waterway. It was a fool idea. I paddled on nicely with the lightened dugout for a mile, en- tranced by the morning beauty of the wet woods, the singing birds and flowers. When the cypress thinned a bit I discovered that Bayou L'Ourse led into a glade of sawgrass and wild hyacinth, and I thought I saw a ridge of higher land beyond. I congratulated my- self. When Hen came back with his nigger cart I would have the Bantayan all loaded and ready to start for a paddle through the swamp. So I worked on through the grass and cane. 138 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH The sun was up and burning hotly down on the muddy margins of the bayou, which was now hardly more than a shallow ditch. And snakes I I began to see them lying within paddle reach, lazy and lethargic, big black moccasins, cotton- mouths, and now and then a reddish copper- head. As I dug on through the mud I mauled them over the head, killing eight in as many yards. But the farther I went, the shoaler grew the water and the hotter the sun. The gnats began to dance over the evil-smelling mud and presently I felt rather sick. I glanced ahead and then back. Snakes everywhere. I stood up and counted twenty-nine. Then I realized that it was the indescribable odor from this snake den that was sickening me ; that, and the sun and the three hours' labor without breakfast. I concluded to turn about, for there was no navigable water ahead. But that gave me no end of difficulty. I couldn't drive the canoe around in the mud, and I could not step out, for the mire was bottomless and the three and six-foot moccasins were every- SNAKES OF BAYOU L'OURSE 139 where. Sick and hot, I worked at it and at the end of an hour had not back-tracked twenty yards, when I heard a ''Ho-ee!" back in the cypress. Old Man Crepelle was standing in his runnin' pirogue staring at me. " Man, wha' yo' goin'? " "I don't know. Some snakes, aren't they?" " Snakes ! Worse hole in dis swamp f o' snakes. Dey got me cowed ! Yo' betteh git out a-deh! Dose big ones larrup right into yo' pi- rogue if dey gits mad ! " I larruped another one over the head. They were too somnolent to attack one, I imagined, but Crepelle was badly frightened. He would not budge from the shade of the cypress, and I had to work back alone, with the old swamper scolding me every yard. When I got to the timber I was about done up. Crepelle let out another cry of dismay when he discovered I had piled three of the biggest snakes into my pi- rogue. "Mon Bieu! Skin 'em! Dat's bad luck, M'sieu! Don't bring dem snakes to my camp! " 140 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH And when I approached he sat hastily down and paddled on ahead. His light shell went over flats that our heavy canoe would not take, and when I reached his camp his voice came excitedly as he told Hen : " Yo' partner, he out deh bringin' in a load o' snakes! Dey sho* got me cowed! " I was too sick to skin my snakes when I got back. Anyway, Hen had a nigger cart waiting and we lifted the Bantayan into it, piled the camp stuff on, and set out. Mid-afternoon we came out of La Fourche woods into the narrow strip of cultivable land fronting the bayou. It was green with young sugar cane. Down the long rows a line of darkies, men and women and children, hoed the black earth, while the mount- ed overseer rode behind and jacked up the lag- gards. He was very courteous, but mystified at us appearing from the swamp, refused any compensation for the mule cart, and told the hands to see us off safely on Bayou La Fourche. We paddled on in a stiff headwind until dark, and made camp on the ancient levee. We could SNAKES OF BAYOU L'OURSE 141 see nothing but the greensward, with a cow grazing here and there, and it was a pleasing surprise to chmb the levee and look down on a smiling country of small farms stretching to the swamp woods three miles away on either side. The people were all Creoles, truck-raisers and storekeepers, w^hile along the slow-moving bayou came red-sailed luggars, the Italian crews pol- ing them against the failing breeze. It was an interesting country. We made Lockport the next morning, dined at the hotel, got directions as to how to reach Bayou Terrebonne, and set off down a weedy canal southward. But it came on to rain before the first mile, and when we saw a large, dirty tent on the bank by a lumber pile we went ashore. There were two men in- side, sitting by a smoky stove, and at first glance we knew thej^ were " Yankees." They were from Kalamazoo, and they were trying to reclaim three thousand acres of wet land along Field Lake. As it blew and rained harder, we accepted their invitation to make camp with them. They helped us put up our 142 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH little silk tent, and we all dined on fried trout, tea, and macaroni. Our hosts were wet but hopeful. They were waiting for the cattle which they were going to run on their holdings to kill the " piene grass " for a year or two, until they began cultivation. Several other Northerners had settled about, and the company was work- ing to drain the small lakes to make available the land beyond *' the forty-arpent line," the historic demarkation beyond which the Cajun farmers would not venture. However, Yankee capital was doing wonders on the black, rich swamp soil. The gentlemen took us in a launch the next day to show us how their pumping plant worked to drain the low- lands. It would remove the rainfall at the rate of two million gallons an hour from the main ditch. Into this the field laterals led the water, and we were told that the pump would drain off a four-inch rain in twenty-four hours and leave the prairie dry enough to plow the next day. Anyhow, the contrast of this black humus with adjoining areas of wild cane, infested with alli- gators and snakes, was refreshing. SNAKES OF BAYOU L'OURSE 143 The newcomers had great hopes of pepper- mint as a crop. Potatoes, corn, onions, toma- toes — all were flourishing fabulously on the Raceland prairies. But the April rainfall was something big. It fell upon Hen and me that night in our tent, the wind howled and snatched at the silk, and by midnight we were lying in a pool of water. But we refused to be routed out, although dawn came on us soaked and sleepy. We breakfasted and dried out our camp. But, glory be to the duffles and piffles! Not a drop had gone through the paraffin bags to our grub. We paddled on the next day — a most beau- tiful one — through Field and Long lakes, then up Bayou Terrebonne, through another minia- ture farming country of the Creoles, and came to the little French town of Houma at night. Next day was Easter, and we idled in the plaza and watched the churchgoing folk. It was all clean and sweet and sunny after the swamps and snakes of La Fourche. Round about were sugar plantations, and motor cars rolled out the white shell roads to the great houses. We liked Houma immensely. Little boys came to our 144 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH camp, all quiet, respectful little chaps, who an- swered " Yes, sir," and " No, sir," and volun- teered to carry water. They had never seen a tent and thought we must have a " show." We had got quite used to that by now. All down Terrebonne the darky women came to the bank to ask if we were selling anything, and neither white nor colored could make out that two men would paddle that dugout around just for " pleasure." We had a call from the sheriff of the parish next day. He just dropped in " to see what we were about," he explained. The big planta- tion owners had no liking for strange white men to be about their negroes. The sheriff said that employment agents were forever trying to lure hands off the plantation to work in the lumber camps and towns, and itinerant peddlers swin- dled the negroes, getting good money that, of course, by all that w^as just and holy, the plan- tation stores ought to get. But when the Terre- bonne planters could once understand that we desired no further business with the hands than SNAKES OF BAYOU UOURSE 145 to photograph them they were very hospitable. Our Easter dinner was a big mulligan of steak and vegetables, rice and blackberry jam, for the blackberries literally enrobed Terrebonne on both banks for miles. And the storekeeper where we made a few purchases sent us a fine banana cake, and another man sent us oysters. We couldn't help liking Houma. Houma was a great oyster-packing point. The streets and roads were all white shelled; and one oyster house had a pile of these in its yard estimated to be worth two thousand dol- lars. The oysters came up the bayous from Grand Caillou, Tambalier, and all the south coast reefs, the red-shirted luggarmen lending an ever-picturesque color to the green-banked bayou. We regretted to leave Houma. Not that we knew yet where we were going. Not a word from that canoe. Hen yawned when I mentioned it. He gaped wider when I remind- ed him of his digestion and the Fountain of Ponce de Leon. " Oh, yes — that old party ! He made a mis- 146 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH take in going to Florida. He should have come to Terrebonne and had the natives feed him banana cake." " If we're going to Florida in the Bantayan** I answered, " or Yucatan, or wherever it is, we ought to turn around. It's about twenty-four thousand five hundred miles in the direction we are paddling, and my hands are a bit blistered." " Suppose it is twenty-four thousand? We're in no hurry. Let's wander on to the Atcha- falaya country and see that oak under which Evangeline sat and waited for her Gabriel.'* " Girls? " I said. " Thought you came down here to forget girls and table d'hotes and all that sort of thing? " " Yes," he murmured, flicking a fly off his ear. " But I want to see that oak. I want to know how Evangeline could sit under a Louisi- ana oak without the red bugs getting her. And if they had, there wouldn't have been any poem. No one can sigh for love with the red bugs on *em. You can't mix girls and red bugs and then expect any poetry out of the combination — ^no, sir!" SNAKES OF BAYOU L'OUBSE 147 So we went on lazily. Hen's automatic rifle was getting rusted and his scientific fishing kit was unopened. He didn't seem to care. He had no interest in his stomach any more. Or his hair. He was getting almighty lazy. The way we slept nights in that silk tent was a caution. It was the hardest sort of work to be under way in the Bantayan before nine in the morning. And at eleven o'clock Hen invariably proposed we go ashore and eat something. But we man- aged to paddle on into Bayou Black, past some very fine plantations, into a region of tiny farms between the bayou and the blue wall of the swamp forest which was always in sight beyond. One morning we awoke to discover three dark- eyed children gazing at us. "Bon jour!'* they hailed us smilingly, and then disappeared to come back with hot rolls and some dry kindling, having watched our efforts to start breakfast with wet sticks. Then they sat about us, smiling silently. We had bought a new and small coffee " dripper " some time back and now the Bodin children pro- ceeded to show Hen how to make real " Cajun " 148 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH coifee. Hen sat patiently through breakfast while our small hosts pressed the black pow- dered coffee in the " drip " and slowly, drop by drop, added the water. " Now, when do I get my coffee? " demanded Hen, time and again. " Oh, M'sieu, afterwards! " Robert assured him. And from that time on, coffee via the slow drip methods of the Cajun pot was " afterwards coffee " with us — we never could get it concocted in time for breakfast. Three colored lumbermen also stopped in to find amusement over our breakfast efforts. The Bodin children explained that they were not in school because the " Yankee " schoolma'am had resigned. She could not find table board to suit her, demanding canned peas and baker's bread and wanting her room calcimined. The bayou people couldn't understand this, so she quit and there was no school. The three swampers " sorteh lazed round all day," as they put it, watching us dry out our stuff from the night's rain. When we lit our pipes and strolled over to talk to them one said : SNAKES ON BAYOU UOUBSE 149 " Do Ah onde'stand you-all a-paddlin' that li'l boat round fo' pleasuah?" " Yes." "Pleasuah?" "Yes. Pleasure.'^ He looked at us and then broke into soft, in- >vard regurgitations of laughter. " Pleasuah I Some folks is got some quee' ideas o' pleasuah I Ah'd rather done go to N'Awlyins and see' a pictu' show." !N'one of the people here had ever seen a camper or heard of anybody traveling through the bayous on " pleasure." The Bodin children had never seen a tent; they examined and dis- cussed ours with curiosity. But never such kindly, lively, and wideawake youngsters. Alcide and Antoinette said they would bring us some milk, but at supper time came back mournfully abashed to relate that there was no milk. The cows had refused to come out of the deep swamp back of the fields, and when the cows wouldn't come home no one could make them. We all went blackberrying the next day in the swamp edge, and the dis- 150 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH graced cows booed from the cypress woods, but still refused to come out. It was on Bayou Black, in our Arcadian leis- ure there, that Hen had his celebrated case of the Nigger from Grand Caillou. I have told of our hypodermic syringe and stuff for snake bite. Hen was ever aggrieved at me because I refused to get snake-bitten and let him practice on me. The Nigger from Grand Caillou was hanging around camp one day and heard our never-end- ing discussion of the hypo cure for snake bite. Now, that nigger needed fo' bits. He needed f o' bits the worst waj^. So, happy thought — Hen offered him fo' bits if he would get snake bit and let Hen practice. The nigger said he 'lowed he would. Fo' bits is a lot of money. So the Nigger from Grand Caillou went off in the swamp and came back snake-bit. He showed the hole. It was a round sort of hole in the nigger, right on his forearm, and it had some blood. "Excellent!" said Hen, and proceeded to pump the nigger full of dope. The nigger's eyes stuck out, but he said he didn't mind if he SNAKES ON BAYOU L'OUTtSE 151 got the fo' bits. Well, after the operation Hen gave the nigger his fo' bits. Then we sat around waiting for something to happen to the nigger. Nothing happened. We gave the nigger his supper and Hen told him to report in the morn- ing. He did so — before breakfast. He reported for dinner, he reported for supper. He hung around all the time we camped at Bodin's with Hen anxiously inspecting the hole and examin- ing the nigger. Hen was hurt because the nigger showed no symptoms of any sort. He neither would die nor would he get any better. He just hung around and had a whale of an appetite. I grew suspicious about that snake. Hen had asked him if it was a moccasin or a copperhead, and the nigger assured him that it was one of the worst snakes for niggers ever seen in these parts. The nigger stayed to supper and breakfast again and borrowed Hen's pants to go to a " ball " over near Mawgan City. Hen laid a strict injunc- tion on him to report next day. The nigger did — before breakfast. He was a woebegone nig- 152 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH ger now. He had become infamous overnight. The story had spread of how the Yankee doctor had used him for experimental purposes. *' Boss, I done come back hyah to ax yo' to tak dat stuff outen mah system," he said. " All dem fool niggehs at de ball dey wouldn't have nuffin to do wid me. Dey said Ah was changin* coloh lak Ah was purple now. Gin don' seem to make me feel drunk now, an' mah girl she won't have nuffin to do wid me. I hatter sit round dat ball all alone jes lak a poisoned pup!" Hen couldn't take the stuff outen his system. He was aggrieved that nothing outwardly hap- pened to the nigger. As for myself, I was cyn- ically minded as to the snake. But when we paddled away from Bayou Black the Nigger from Grand Caillou still sat on the bank, gazing sorrowfully after us. He was the poisoned pup. We had totally ruined his social position. Thankful to camp on the roots of a sunken cypress. CHAPTER VIII ITHROUGH THE DEEP SWAMP WE paddled on from this bit of Arcady with regret. Alcide, 'Toinnette, and Robert came down from the planta- tion-house to bid us adieu — and bring us an enormous bullfrog which the boys had captured. We had told them of our desire to eat of the fried and famous bullfrogs of the bayou region. He was a whopper — big as a chicken, and when we cooked him just as one would a broiler he was great and enough for a family. I took a farewell sail with the big red lateen which we had brought along with the Bantayan and never used, as we dared not risk it with all our fancy camera stuff on board. But this morning I was skimming up Bayou Black while Hen perched on a stump to snapshot the pirogue 153 154 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH as she flew by. It was a squally day, and just as I came past the plantation-house, leaning the ticklish craft over so that Hen would have a picture with " some action," as he demanded, a puff of wind hit me off the bank. Over we went, green pirogue, red sail — all upside down, amid shrieks of laughter from our delighted Creole friends. As I was then traveling with but one pair of trousers, Robert dashed to the house and made me a loan, for the day was cool. I felt it by the time I was fished out. That day's trip took us quite out of the farm country. The bayou grew more wild and beau- tiful, the banks lower, and the oaks and pecans gave way to the gray cypress jungle and the latanier palms. We met no one on the last miles except a few negro tie-cutters standing up " row-pushing " their square-end skiffs, chant- ing lugubriously with the stroke. The men pole the ties out of the deep swamp along narrow water aisles, fifty to a hundred in a string, wet to the skin day-long, hardly seeing the sun until they have towed the ties to the bayou side. THROUGH THE DEEP SWAMP 155 There they are loaded on barges and sent on to " Mawgan City." We pushed on through Bayou Chien with a strong tide bearing us seaward between the semi-tropic banks. The tangle of palmettoes, grape-vines, willows, and cypress, together with the masses of wild hyacinths floating along the shores, made a landing dijfficult anywhere. Then we would come to a bit of real land where the oaks and greensward made the country look like a great park, and then plunge on in the forest. The bayou gradually widened and once again came plantations, the colored hands in the fields and the white quarters showing over the young cane. We reached Morgan City at nightfall and made a pleasant camp under the oaks. Bayou Chien here flowed into the mighty Atcha- falaya, which, in turn, thirty miles below, pours into the Gulf of Mexico. We looked out on that swift, yellow flood, bearing the drift and debris of the bankful Mississippi with some doubts — we would have to cross it and go some miles up to reach the Teche country. 156 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH My remembrance of ^lorgan City is that a pest of Argentine ants invaded camp, that we dickered for two chickens for fifteen cents each, and then discovered we had ten cents left, with no apparent chance of cashing a check in this town of strangers. Hen's solicitude for those chickens was touching. He crawled out of bed all hours of the night to see if they were still roosting on the rail fence by the tent where they had been tied. He mumbled about colored citizens and preda- tory 'possums in his sleep, and was out with a "Hooray!" at daybreak when one of the youngsters crowed. Sunday, and wash-day. Sour-dough cakes and coffee for breakfast; but for dinner — oh, you Mawgan City chickens I One apiece. We went without lunch in order to be equal to them. Pushboats and johnboats went past us all morning, filled with colored folk on the way to church. Some landed near us to make their way through the leafy woods to town. The women had on bright headkerchiefs, and the men were THROUGH THE DEEP SWAMP 157 very solemn in black Sunday garb. When I came back from swimming I discovered Hen, as usual, had got into a vast argument with the natives. One old grizzled-chop darky was asking, "Ain't you-all tellin' fawtchunes like dem old Egypt folkses used to do?" " Get out! " said Hen. " What makes every- body think that ? " The venerable brother shook his head. " Only one eve' fitten to tell fawtchunes wor Moses, hisself." Hen was inclined to dispute the Mosaic legend, and at once he was in for it. The old darky laid down his cane and book, wiped his brow, and proceeded to expound. They had it hot and heavy, and our guest wound up: " Man, you try done tell me Moses got his learnin' f'um dem Egyptologers? Well, wha' dem Egyptologers git it f'um?'* " From the Phoenicians." "F'um dem Phoenicians? Well, wha' dem Phoenicians git it f'um?" 158 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH " From tradition." " Well, wha' dem Traditioners git it f'um? " Hen paused, stumped at last. And his tri- umphant interlocutor picked up his cane with a flourish: "Yas-seh! Wha' dem Tradition- ers git it f'um? " And off he went, leaving Hen clear flabber- gasted, sure enough. After the demise of the chickens we spent a pleasant evening speculating on the sorts of bugs crawling over us now and then. Hen would lay down one of our nickels and I would lay down the other and the pool would go to the man guessing right on the next sort of bug down his neck — redbug, ant, mosquito, or some of the many amateur bugs which we couldn't classify. We got away a fine sunny morning up the Atchafalaya, much pleased that through the courtesy of the postmaster of Morgan City Hen had his check cashed. We made an extra careful pack of the duffle bags, cameras, and j^uns for the venture across the big river. Many were the comments of the idlers along Morgan THROUGH THE DEEP SWAMP 159 City's wharves when the Bantayan poked her nose cautiously off in the swift flood. " It's all right to be bold, but not too bold, seh ! " one skipper assured us. " Ah'd as soon start up riveh in a pocket-handkerchief as yore boat!" We had a fight to climb up under the arches of the railroad bridge and then, sitting each a-straddle of a heap of luggage, for the Ban- tayan w^as so weighted with her pack that the thwarts were invisible and she showed barely two inches' freeboard along her sides, we dug the paddles into the Atchafalaya and passed on. After a mile of hard, slow work, dodging the perils of floating logs and lily masses, we en- countered a swell sweeping from a sea-going tug that gave us a bad scare. Hen was steering and he brought the tiny pirogue around in time to meet the rushing wave so that we split it and the succeeding ones fairly and shipped little water. I ceased paddling entirely and balanced my paddle in the air, so ticklishly did the thir- teen-footer roll for a minute or two. " Curtains," murmured Hen, looking at the 160 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH far shores. But the Bantayan stood the seas splendidly. We got out of the mad rush of water past the point and into the easy reaches of Bayou Teche by mid-afternoon, landed, bailed the water out, lunched on a can of beans, and paddled on into this most beautiful country of all Louisiana. But in the days following we tired of civilization and wanted to get back to our wilderness. The Teche, the historic home of the early Creole sugar-growing aristocracy, was one succession of great estates, noble-pil- lared houses, sugar-stacks, and darky gangs afield, with her and there a lumber mill in one of the prosperous little towns we passed. The bayou became more winding and pictur- esque above Franklin. There was little navi- gation, and the stream seemed a show river run- ning through a show-country, parked, scrubbed, ribboned with green, and set with stately oaks and hedges. It narrowed, too, so that one got the most intimate and personal glimpses, sylvan towns, distant spires, and white roadways; while now and then we rounded a clump to find our- Now and then we dragged the pirogue from pool to pool. THROUGH THE DEEP SWAMP ICl selves almost in the tub, as it were, of a group of black, clean-turbaned mammies doing the family wash. On almost every plantation we were stopped by a tiny foot-bridge across the placid bayou, and some ancient of years would hobble down from the " sto' " to open it, collect a nickel, and hobble back to his gallery. Opposite Charenton we encamped upon the estate of Monsieur Vigoreaux, threw our blan- kets about the great roots of a fantastic oak jutting over the water, and slept, tired from a fourteen hours' continuous paddling. The next day disclosed the same tranquil beauty of land and baj^ous, although we did not see so many imposing plantations and stately houses of the old regime as below Charenton and Irish Bend. There were more rice fields than cane and more lumber mills, and the traffic on the stream was much less as it narrowed. New Iberia was a well-kept and pretty spot under its Southern oak, and now, for the first time in almost two months, w^e decided to sleep under a roof and stored our camp outfit on the deck of a gasoline 102 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH boat at the bridge dock. And I cannot quite analyze the intolerable feeling that came over me lying in that stuffy hotel-room. I was at once unhappy and restless; indeed, beautiful as the Teche trip was, Hen and I were already getting grouched wherever civiliz- ation touched us. We wanted our wilderness. The Fountain lay not here nor there among these smiling towns and ordered country-sides. We wandered about New Iberia, the subject of some comment, overhearing one lady in a store remark: "Those two men are sailing around the world in a pirogue ! " And a very earnest small boy came up to me on the street as I sauntered along and asked: " Suh, are you a Cubian?" I looked the part, perhaps. I hadn't shaved since we dropped into the Barataria woods, and only now had had the beard trimmed into a nifty Van Dyke that made Hen envious. And that, with a Mexican hat and the sunburn, made up the part. We were badly off for clothes as soon as we struck a town, for neither had a THROUGH THE DEEP SWAMP 163 coat, and the exigencies of pirogue traveling had stripped our wardrobe to the barest essen- tials. All along we had been solving the ques- tion of making that thirteen-foot dugout sea- worthy b}'- chucking overboard every last ounce that could be spared. And while we idled and discussed the next move we got some decisive news. Among the letters forwarded w^as one from the steamship company that had shipped our famous sea-going canoe from ^N'ew York. It was at the bottom of the Atlantic! The canoe, not the company. It seemed that the carrier-steamer had collided with another some- where off Hatteras and gone to the bottom with its entire cargo. The agent regretted it exceed- ingly ! "Now, what do you think of that?" yelled Hen. " Florida and the Fountain ! Here we are in Louisiana headed exactly off in the wrong direction, and our canoe at the bottom of the sea!" We stared at one another. " Florida be hanged ! " I said. " This is better forty ways 164 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH for Sunday. Florida is smeared from St. Au- gustine to Key West with tourists and hotel grubbers. Down here we don't run into one. Florida is screamed at you from every railroad folder and advertising agency. The Teche country is innocent of either. More beautiful — more romantic — untouched, unspoiled — Arca- dian in its " " Who's the girl? " said Hen. " That rangy looker in the P. O. window?" "Go to! There ain't no girl. It's the cli- mate. And the spring. And the two hundred miles' paddling we've done. And the — well, the grub, and the appetite, and chaps like Capau, the dreamy-eyed old swamper, whose stories we've been listening to every night down on the bayou bank. I feel fine and fit. Let's drift off into the Grand Lake country where Capau says the natives are who hunt with blowguns — actu- ally! In this twentieth-century America! And see the Evangeline oak " But there I rubbed Hen the wrong way. He was touchy about Evangeline. Every town we THROUGH THE DEEP SWAMP 165 had struck from Houma to the upper Teche had claimed Evangeline. That maid must have spent months about the Atchafalaya lakes, get- ting all sorts of trees and dells and bends of the bayou named after her. Not a Cajun but what would grow wide-eyed if you asked of Long- fellow's afflicted lady. Once a schoolmaster over at Grand Cane had written a play about Evangeline and her oak, so Capau told us. He saw it with his own eyes, and it had four acts and was as large as your hat. The hotel man also saw it, and the saloon man at the bridge. It was a fine play, but the barkeeper said it wasn't as large a play as Capau insisted. He said there was no more than a good double hand- ful of paper altogether, and he wasn't certain whether that was enough for a good play. Then there was an argument over the bar in the midst of which a sad-eyed bum who had sidled in to mooch us for a beer suddenly amazed me by taking part and quoting Polonius's speech of admonition to players in general — " Speak the speech, I pray you," etc. 166 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH He was a panhandler who had come in over the Espee and admitted he had " done time " in eastern Texas, but he new more of literature than Hen and I and the barkeeper and Capau, the swamper, rolled in one. But we parted from our courteous friends of the Teche the next morning and started to find a way across to the lake country north of here. We paddled all day and until ten that night, made a shift of a camp in the dark, and started a tiny fire for coffee. And that night, as we prepared for bed, a most startling thing happened. I saw the blaze of a light in the dark, the report of a rifle came, and over our heads in the treetops a bullet sang. We stared for a moment and then retreated from the circle of the firelight, I seizing my re- volver on the way. Then we waited many min- utes. Nothing moved in the still country mid- night. We went back to our blankets later, cautiouslj^ discussing the matter. I awoke the next morning to stare up into the gray-green mist of a moss-hung oak with beyond it a beau- tiful dawn. I heard a stir in the grass back of THROUGH THE DEEP SWAMP 1G7 my head and turned to discover a tall colored man in a faded, striped convict suit looking down interestedly. He carried a hoe and a can of seeds, and when he saw I was awake he re- moved his hat and said: " 'Xcuse me, boss, but I gotter plant dem wattermillions hyah!" We sat up to look as interestedly at him. Across the bayou we now saw the white sheds and fences of a State convict farm. The same thought shot across our minds. " Look here," said Hen, " did some of your fellows shoot at us last night?" Convict Evariste Moore, aged 54, doing twenty years for killing another negro in Point Coupee, couldn't say exactly. But if any fool guard had done so he was ready to apologize on behalf of the State. Anyhow we were asleep on forbidden ground, the wattermillion patch of the State convict farm of Louisiana. We got out lazily and built our twig fire for coffee and invited Evariste to have some. He glanced cautiously about and 168 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH took the cup, but respectfully stood at attention, hat off, while he conversed. He told us all about the camp, said he was treated very well, and when Hen took his picture a gush of tears filled the black man's eyes. " If you-all gem'men send that picture back to mah wife in ole Point Coupee, she be the happies' 'oman in dis hull gove'ment ! " We assured him we would. We went over to see the commandant later. He told us undoubt- edly one of the guards had fired at our camp, as they were ordered to do at any fire started on the farm grounds. We did not stop to de- mand justice, but went on down the bayou to camp the next night on Albania plantation, where the young manager. Monsieur Allain, was more hospitable. The old Albania planta- tion-house was built in 1830 and still stood in its original grove of oaks and pecans. We discussed with Mr. Allain the best way to get over in the great chain of lakes and little- known bayous stretching northwest to the Mis- sissippi from the Teche. He tried to dissuade THROUGH THE DEEP SWAMP 109 us, saying the swamps there were flooded from the overflowed Atchafalaya and Mississippi, but finaUy loaned us the inevitable nigger and mule cart to portage our boat across the fields. Out of the beautiful level cane ground, fine and fresh as a new-worked garden, the road grew rougher and wetter, the mule-cart bumped and jogged over logs and into pools where the moccasins crawled from the wheels. Finally, at sunset, the darky declined to go any farther into the big woods. He said it was a bad swamp from now on, and there were no houses and probably no land to be found above water. Now Hen and I should have camped right then and there rather than go into the Grand Swamp at nightfall. But we felt fit and fine, having slept most of the afternoon, so after buy- ing a live cliicken from the last nigger shanty on the road we paddled off into the flooded forest. For a mile or so we found a tolerable straight lane, and then the blazed trees marked the trail. But presently, as the sunset and the gloom gath- ered in the mighty cypress, we had to turn from 170 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH this blazed trail to paddle around a fallen tree and this involved us in a patch of brush under which we pulled and dragged our pirogue, con- suming so much time that when we had got into open water once more we were surprised to find how dark it had become and that off to the northwest there were mutters of a coming storm. Then we were unpleasantly surprised to find that the blazed trail we were following was no longer ascertainable. We paddled on through the gloomy shades, looking for a lessening of the trees which would mark the shore of Grand Lake. We had been directed to the camp of a lonely hunter who would receive us on Allain*s word. But we had to make another long detour, working about floating logs and under a jungle of creepers and latanier palms. The big lake had overflown its banks and there was land nowhere. " There's a sizable chance," murmured Hen, "of roosting in a tree to-night." It looked more like it every yard. And the THROUGH THE DEEP SWAMP 171 storm grew rapidly, so rapidly that presently, save for the flashes of lightning and the shim- mer of a young moon all but obscured, we saw nothing. And then the great gray trees with their flj'ing moss streamers were not reassuring. As the wind soared stronger we dwelt upon the possibility of a limb plunging down and sink- ing us all yards deep in the swamp mud. We got under a veritable hornets' nest of thorn- yines where we had to use the axe to free the boat, and by that time the squall hit the big woods with a. demoniacal fury. How it did roar and blow! We brought up under the lee of a fallen log and hung there tightly while the forest heaved and shrieked about us. A spatter of rain came with it, but we faced it head down, resolved not to take chances on trying to find shelter under our rubber cloth in this melee. Fortunately there was little rain. The gale buffeted us for half an hour, with the most terrifying electric display I ever saw, and then as suddenly died 172 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH down. Only a dying blast came now and then, and behind the flying scud the stars were shin- ing as peacefully as they had an hour ago. Our hair and faces were filled with bits of moss and rotten bark torn from the trees, and when we tried to push out, the broken brush impeded the pirogue. But at last, after a few more hundred yards of work, we saw a thinning in the forest, struggled toward it, and from there caught a glimpse of open water. The shimmer of the waves in the setting moon showed us the way. We paddled into the big lake at last, tired from a four hours' battle with the swamp. But nowhere had we found an inch of land. The majestic cypress arose sheer from the depths, and their spiked knees caused us to paddle warily away from the points. Luckily the sea was fast running down and when we rounded the first point we were in calm water. But not a house or a habitation, nor even a foot- hold! As we worked on, skirting the forest shore, I felt a movement at my feet, and the bedrabbled rooster we had purchased uprose and THROUGH THE DEEP SWAMP 173 crowed, shaking the water from his tail. He had been tied to the main sheet, the stick and canvas lying furled under me. " Good old scout! " yelled Hen, "that sounds very cheerful ! " Then he pointed ; " Brought us luck — there's a light ! " We saw a gleam far to the east. I laid a course for it — and it disappeared. Then I struck a bearing from the far point of land and one dim star ahead and steered on. Twice again we saw the light, and each time it went out or was hidden. We anxiously scanned the dark line of forest. The last bend of shore brought us full in the run of the waves from the lake, and the wind was again rising. The Bantayan wallowed down badly with her handicap of rain- water under the pack, and we were unable to bail. Then we ran into a field of our old en- emies, the water hyacinths, tossing on the waves, and these sheered us far off our course. It was an hour before we drew near the point where the light had been. The shore was dark as Erebus. We stopped and began shouting. 174 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH Then we paddled a mile along the woods, shout- ing and hallooing. The prospect of encounter- ing another blow on Grand Lake with a shore- line so filled with tossing logs and deadly cy- press spur^ that one could not approach it was not assuring. On we paddled in the dark, anx- iously trying to distinguish the tossing lily masses from the drifting logs. The wreckage was smashing against the bases of the sub- merged cypress trees, and one stretch of shore consisting of willows gleamed a ghastly white against the forest because of the trees being com- pletely skinned by the bombardment. The whole shore of the lake was filled with this wreckage of the upper rivers poured by the Mississippi into the Atchafalaya. If we had known then as much as we did later we never would have tack- led it. The entire country north of us, forest, lake, and bayou, was buried under the rushing torrents from the Father of Waters. But Hen and I went blundering on in tha? thirteen-foot hollow log looking for land. We whooped again for that mysterious light. It was THROUGH THE BEEP SWAMP 175 dirty going, and presently the wash of water inside the pirogue was alarming. She was fill- ing from the smash of the seas, for we had to keep her broadside to them to skirt the shore. To head out was madness and to attempt run- ning in over the flooded shore among the drift- age was equally dangerous. And just when we began to think the voyage of the Bantayan had ended right there, and we would weather the night in a tree, a light flashed out startlingly close. Then we made out a high platform camp. A man was peering across the whitecaps at us. And the way we headed the Bantayan about and came splashing in under that platform was illuminating. We were scared. The last seas filled and rolled the pi- rogue like a log broadside on against the pilings, so that we grasped desperately at the foot of the ladder. The swampers above were yelling down at us in French. Finally, with their help we got the 'Bantayan out of the wash and driftage and on a submerged float behind the camp. Then we 176 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH crawled up wet and chilled. A gaunt, bearded man was staring at us. Then a younger one ad- dressed us in fair English. We w^ere in a Grand Lake tie-cutters' camp and a dozen Creoles and Spaniards from the deep swamp had taken ref- uge on M'sieu Landry's platform until the storm was over. When we told them we had made our way in the dark across the swamp from the Teche they were frankly incredulous. *^*' Tres hien, M'sieu, but how yo* know trail? " "Didn't know any trail I We just bumped her through." The young man shook his head. " Yo' wan lucky man! By Gar, I couldn't find mah way in dis stawm and de Crevasse!" Hen whispered to me as he wi-ung the water out of his socks. *'Say, we've made a reputation! Now don't spoil it by any fool exhibitions with your paddle to-morrow! Throw out your chest and tell 'em that this was just a little joy ride! " " Hi, if only Allesjandro could see us now! If we ever get back to Clark Cheniere we'll give a ball in honor of Ponce de'Leon and Columbus Wu shot s(juirrfls nlong thu juiiglo-grown shores of Grand F.akc. THROUGH THE DEEP SWAMP 177 and Balboa and our other fellow-navigators." Hen sat down to his coffee and gave a fervent account of our travels and the Cajuns listened respectfully. Then young Landry murmured : " Yo' sho* wan beeg pirogue man! But why yo' travel round with dat chicken tied by hees leg to dat string in dat boat ? " Outside we heard that fool rooster give a cheerful crow, for it was now close to dawn. Clearly we were under suspicion. CHAPTER IX JSOME KOUGH PADDLING WHEN I awoke under the mosquito bar M'sleu Felix Landry was moving softly about. He greeted us with gentle courtesy, and we discovered that the other half-dozen men had breakfasted and gone quietly away " out front " in the pirogues. They had all talked in undertones so as not to disturb the sleeping guests. Can you imagine half a dozen Irish or American woodsmen tiptoeing about a room out of consideration for two strangers? I can't. That was the Creole of it. M'sieu Landry was animated enough now. His son, Florion, had caught a fine gaspergou, and we had a famous cou'houillion. Also small, snappy biscuits, the best ever. Felix had been cook on a Mississippi packet, but love for the 178 SOME ROUGH PADDLING 179 woods drove him back to them. In the four days the Norther kept us penned up on the platform camp he and I fraternized over that most mel- lowing of outdoor bonds — camp grub. Florion and I shot black squirrels in the swamps, and Hen hooked a big catfish and a 'gou or two, and w^e had couhouillions, jambelayas, poisson pi- quant eSj rouXj, all made famously under the hand of M'sieu Felix. Florion caught some crawfish and we had a great bisque. M'sieu was delighted to have a pupil in Cajun cookery. Four days we ate and smoked and argued in the swamp patois interlarded with our pidgin- English. Six other men came in, driven from the lakes by the storm. We were on Lake False Point, we found. Grand Lake was just visible through a stormy pass to the east. To the west the whitecaps beat on unbroken forest through which the fierce currents whirled from the flooded Atchafalaya. It was great luck finding Lan- dry's camp — otherwise Hen and I would have been in for it. The Cajuns all declared we could not ascend the chain of lakes in this ridiculous 180 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH pirogue. There was no land above water, no shores, nor would there be any good weather this month. Everything was drowned by the angry rivers pouring their floods down from the melted snows of all America; it would be one continual torrent through the Atchafalaya lakes until after the May headrise. " Well," retorted Hen amicably, " we can't go back, so we've got to go on. I like this blamed country — where there's any of it above water — and I like the grub. Florida is an old ladies' home compared to this shindig." Our gentle old Creole friend kept his lamp burning in the window all night after our advent, for, as he explained: " Ah, M'sieu! How I not know some odder lost man lak yo' not be out in dat stawm? " He also asked solicitously if we knew the sig- nals for the lost. Two quick shots and then a single one, repeated? We told him we did, and also the rule of the woods that a needy swamper may break into any untenanted camp he sees and help himself to grub, provided always he does no wanton damage in the camp. SOME ROUGH PADDLING 181 Florion and I had another squirrel hunt with his two " runnin ' pirogues." They were twelve- foot craft, hewn to such a thin nicety on the sides that they were hardly more than canvas — low, needle-like canoes in which we skimmed over places where the heavier boats could not run. I did the rummy trick of shooting over my right gunwale from the pirogue and promptly took a ducking. The slender boat shot upside down from the recoil so quickly that I came up gasping, to meet Florion's gentle laughter. " Only two ways yo' can shoot from dat boat I Wan right head and odder way over yo' left — and yo' mus' watch her at that ! " We had some great squirrel hunts. Also took a shot at a great white-headed eagle which I drove from its nest. Then we went back to camp, dried our clothes, and lolled about while Felix got dinner. Always, of course, came the preliminary coffee. Florion played his mouth-organ and told joy- ously of his " girl " over in St Mary's parish. He was a handsome, brown-throated boy, gentle and merry and skilled to the woods and water; 182 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH with a laughing curiosity as to the great world whence we came. Two more of the swampers returned that afternoon and another feast was on — game and rice and sweet cakes. All this time our hapless chicken, dubbed " Lord Teche," had been roosting out on the platform, tied to a string, fed every day to repletion, but lonesome. We thought of hospitably decapitating him, and then our hearts smote us. He had got to be a friend — and besides there wouldn't be enough of that little chicken for six lusty men! So Lord Teche crowed valiantly every morn- ing and scratched the door for M'sieu Landry to come fetch his breakfast. The Creoles were too polite to intimate that chicken was good. Any- how we had game and fish in abundance. At night the Creoles played '' vingfun " and another game that they called — to us — " Beeg dog." "Ah, dat beeg dog!" said Fehx, "I catch dat ole lady ace, but dat beeg dog — heem never I catch wan lettle time." "Beeg dog" was the jack of spades, we learned. SOME BOUGH PADDLING 183 And now, ye neurasthenics, ye thin o* hair and worn of eye with the tread-mill of the cities, I want to tell you something. A glimpse of the Fountain! At least what our wilderness had brought to Hen and me. We were tired that night, from pulling in the currents on a fishing trip to the big cypress points, so we turned in earlier than our hosts, and I declare to you that, lying in my bunk, my head within two feet of the table where four men were wrangling over the card game, and wrangling with laughter long after midnight, I fell asleep and never woke up till the sun poked his morning face into camp! Can you beat it? No, you can't! You've got to wander over the face of the waters and under the beat of the sun and be swept by the Gulf breezes, and struck by the slant of the rain for three months to be able to drop down in swamp- er's shack and know the dreamless slumber of the heart at peace. They were at their " beeg dog " another night when I was writing up my notebook at the same table. I became aware, my glance bent on the paper, that their languorous murmur had ceased. 184. THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH and looked up to find the eyes of all five men fixed on me intently. A big, lanky swamper had said something to call their attention to me. Old Felix now laughed apologetically. " My friend he say if he could write so lak dat he sho' neve' would be in dees swamps." The big swamper laid down his cards and laughed too, wistfully. " I sho' neve' would. If I had wan educa- tion lak dat I sho' go to N'Awlyins and be a clerk in a sto'." " No, you wouldn't,'* I answered. " You just think you would. You'd try it and be stiff and cramped and ashamed to be bossed by some shop- keeper, and some day you'd think of the free lake, and the sun, and the wind off the big salt water up from the Gulf, and then you'd throw up your job and come back to the woods." But he laughed, a sort of pathos in his brown eyes, rubbing his big hands, as he watched my notebook and Hen's camera. " Mebbe. But I would lak tryin' to be a clerk in a sto'." The next day the norther seemed to have SOME ROUGH PADDLING 185 blown itself out. We could see the light green of the tupelo gums against the gray of the cy- press across Lake False Point at least, even if the yellow tides ran fast and higher day by day. Landry counseled us to wait, but we had been guests of these gentle folk long enough. So the next morning, wondrously beautiful, clear and calm at dawn, we got away, the Bantayan packed tidily, and Lord Teche in his den under the coaming. The woodsmen warned us to stick close to the west shore of the lakes; they were doubtful as to where we would find a stopping- place at night. Certainly no land was above water in seventy miles, and there were few camps along the Atchafalaya lakes now occupied. We paddled away much hghtened by leaving our sail and spar behind ; also part of our kitchen irons and some of our grub. But we had a week's provisions, and here, in the fresh lakes, had no need of carrying water, as we did in the Barataria region. The Creoles shouted a cheery farewell as we drove around Point Camille. Never did we meet a better reception, but among 186 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH a people who met us everywhere with kindness it is hard to choose. We rounded Point Metier and Point Coquille that morning only to run into a freshing north- wester that drove a dirty sea in our faces. But we had to keep on hugging the shore so that if the Bantayan filled and plunged to the bottom under her load we could at least swim to the trees — a dismal refuge, however, for miles of flooded swamp would confront a man in any di- rection. In fact there was hardly a chance of getting out alive, if once shipwrecked. We had trouble at all the points, for the yel- low floods boiled so fiercely among the stumps and trees that we dared not seek refuge there. At noon we cautiously ran the pirogue's nose up to a tossing fragment of a log raft, pulled her up, and ate a hasty lunch. Lord Teche was set out on the logs to stretch his legs. But the wind was getting high and we put in in a few minutes, for it would have been a desperate shore to be weath- ered on. The trees and saplings in the cove were literally torn to splinters by the pounding they SOME ROUGH PADDLING 187 had got from the driftage during the recent gale. So we had to head the tiny Bantayan straight out in the whitecaps. It was bad. We paddled on, seeing no one, nor a boat nor camp all the day — nothing but the stormj'- lake on one hand and the impenetrable jungle on the other. The lake is well named Fausse (False) Point. Time and again we were encouraged to work for hours to a bold promon- tory, thinking to find it land above water and offering a haven, to discover nothing but the crash of the drift among the great butts of the cypress — and another great curve of forest be- yond. Grand Pass, fifteen miles to the east, was filled now with lowering scud, and a spatter of rain came at times out of the northwest. " Bad weather due," growled Hen; " I guess we should have taken Landry's word and stayed off the lakes. Catch those waves a bit deeper and hold her head on. It's mean steering back here." It was mean forward. The pirogue split the combers, but a lot of them shook themselves over 188 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH me, and only her tight little decked space, not so much bigger than a bushel-basket, kept from filling. As it was Lord Teche, between my knees, was soused now and then, and I began to estimate the amount of water down under the luggage. We could not rest a moment to bail it. We began to scan the long, wave-beaten line of forest more anxiously as the sky dulled. The gale blew steadier and harder every hour. I glanced back once to see Hen spitting the top of a whitecap from his teeth — it had curled us neatly on the starboard and only the rubber cloth saved us from swamping. As it was, it took lively work to bring the dugout around be- fore the next wave caught us. We held off the shore until dusk. Now and then we heard the crash of a falling limb in the flooded woods. The vast masses of Spanish moss waving from the cypress were indescribably gloomy and depress- ing, and the thought of seeking shelter in that fearsome wood was more so. We had not seen an inch of land above water all day. The last round of a point laid our course so SOME ROUGH PADDLING 189 that the swells had us full broadside and we stopped to scan seriously the line of dirty sea. " As sure as shooting fish in a bucket, we'll be slammed into the cypress spikes, if we try to keep close in," said Hen. " Let's make a tree roost of it for the night." " And lose our canoe and outfit? " I retorted. *' No, we'll have to beat it on and look for a chance to run in some cove or bayou." Darkness was lowering when we were crawl- ing slowly, with minute inspection of the mass of drift grinding among the trees, along a mile- wide cove. It offered no harbor — was, in fact, worse than the sheer lake. But at the far side the grim wall of forest was a bit broken and we saw the shine of the latanier palms in a sort of glade. When we reached it all we saw was water stretching in, and between us and its com- parative calm a hundred yards of solid wreck- age with the yellow waves leaping all along its outer edge. It was hopeless. We had worked on past this mass and I was digging off on the weather side to draw the 190 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH dugout's nose up into the waves, when I heard Hen shout. " I saw a camp ! " I shot a hasty glance at the wood shore. A great eddy had hurled us on and I could see nothing. But Hen kept yelling that he saw a camp behind the fringe of storm-torn maples. " If you think so, let's head her in," I yelled. " But God help us if there ain't! All that stuff above is working down on us, and the spikes are thicker in there than hair on a dog." We watched our chance to bring the pirogue about and run with the seas before one slapped us broadside. Hen yelled again. The first comber on the turn had gone all over him — rolled clear forward, in fact, and struck my back. "Dig!" he cried, and we shot in. "Dig!" and we swept past a mass of battering logs. Then a swift draw of the paddles and the canoe lifted past a serried row of cypress spikes half buried in the foam. And then another and an- other. We hurried the Bantayan this way and SOME ROUGH PADDLING 191 that like a scared cat, as the seas chased into the woods after us. And then we saw a mass of our old friends, the water hyacinths, and shot her behind them, where only the heave of the swells stirred us, and dropped our paddles, sweating and soaked. Sure enough, right ahead of us was a log hut perched on its platform. We could get no nearer, so we slid overboard in water above our waists and dragged the pirogue on a few yards into the floating tangle — logs, vines, lilies, grass, and dirty foam. But we could not work her within a hundred feet of the shack. I left Hen anchored to a tree and struggled to the place, swimming, wading, climbing. The door was padlocked, but I could see in the chinks. It was occupied, or had been of late. I went back and we brought our duffle sacks to the platform, along with Lord Teche on his hobble. The canoe we dragged up on a fallen but solid tree and left it tied. We rattled the padlock chain and called. But it was plain no one was about. Where the mud 192 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH had fallen from the chinks we saw moss-filled bunks, a clay furnace, open fireplace, and a table. " I reckon, as we're castaways, we might as well invoke the law of the woods and make our- selves comfortable," I said. " Hand up that old axe!" We chopped the staple out of the door and threw it open. It was a darkies' swamp camp, the crudest imaginable, but it offered a roof. And we needed one. In fifteen minutes a fury of rain and wind broke over us that set the woods to howling. Crash after crash told of where the trees were falling in the soaked under-soil. But we had a fire going in no time and the blaze made even the day and the log camp seem home- like after that lake. There was no chimney. The smoke made its way out through a raised slab of the roof. We were too weary to look about or speculate as to the owners. We cooked a hasty supper, hung out soaked clothes about the fire, and tumbled on our blankets spread on On liavou ''I'ccIk' SOME ROUGH PADDLING 193 the moss bunks, fervently hoping there were no other occupants. We had barred the door so that, if the niggers came back in the night — which was hardly possible, as it did not seem a human being could live in the swamp in that hurricane — they would have to awaken us and give time for explanations. At that I slept with my revolver within pulling reach. The swamp blacks are given a bad name by some. But we dropped into a slumber that all Africa could not have broken. CHAPTER X THE WATEKHOUSE BOYS WE awoke to another cool, bright, but treacherous spring morning. The sun shone through the chinks of the wet hut and the mocking birds sang in the swamp maples, while the wide-stretching lake was blue and dimpling beyond the line of battered drift- age hemming us in. Our canoe had come through safely on its perch on the big log. We passed a leisurely morning rubbing our stiff bones and drying clothes. And here, in this lonely camp, there came an end to the adven- tures of Lord Teche. " I do hate to kill that chicken," murmured Hen, " but this morning I feel like fried chicken. Anyhow, we'd lose him if we tried to carry him much farther." 194 THE WATERHOUSE BOYS 195 So a few crocodile tears, and then fried chicken. We had knocked about for eight days with that bayou rooster, and this was the first camp where we had time for sad but fitting rites. Besides, we were afraid the owners of the shack would return, and you all know it is not well to bring chicken and a colored brother into too im- mediate juxtaposition. After breakfast we waded to the pirogue, turned it over a log to drain, then waded back and carried our stuff out to the fringe of drift logs. It looked like another puffy day on the lake and we were anxious to get off. Ahead of us somewhere was Lake Dotreve, which the swampers had assured us was a bad bit of water in the Red and Atchafalaya headrises of May. We got off at noon, leaving a note of thanks on the table for our unknown hosts. " But the chances are," said Hen, " the nig- gers can't read and will think someone has placed a hoodoo on their camp. We'll leave a more intelligible message." So we made a present of some canned corn 196 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH and stuff to the absentees, selecting, of course, some things we didn't want ourselves, which is the soul of all true philanthropy. Also we cooked a batch of sour dough and left half of it — the burned ones, that is, for our reflector baker just naturally would burn the lower row of biscuits. It was three o'clock on the first of May when we paddled about the last great spur of sub- merged cypress butts into Lake Dotreve. Its blue shore line of forest ten miles away was ut- terly lonely and uninhabited as far as we could see. Already a bad sea was kicking up with the freshing northwester. After an hour of skirting the south shore, where we had to catch the whitecaps broadside on, we made out what appeared to be a house away to the west. Hen turned the Bantayan out straight for it, and the course took us a mile and a half off shore. We figured to cross the bend before the lake rough- ened too much for the pirogue. But presently a wave laced us fore and aft, and I heard the rush of the water under our luggage. It didn't look good, and I freely said so. THE WATEBHOUSE BOYS 197 While Hen held her on in the seas, I bailed cautiously — as much as a man can bail a loaded craft when he cannot in the least turn in his seat, nor shift his weight right or left, without capsizing her instantly. I merely could spread my knees and snatch a bit of water with a tin cup. But another wave undid all my work — and then another. The Bantayan was wallowing heavily. The nasty seas would not allow her to get her head up, as a canoe might have done. We held a hasty council. " It'll be no easy trick to turn and run for the shore, but it's the best bet," Hen muttered. *' Watch for the sixth swell — it's always the big- gest. Then dig sharp about to port — now!'* We ripped the blades in right after the run of the water, and the pirogue got her tail into the seas before they could slap her. But that retreat back to the swamp shore was the most ticklish bit of pirogue running I have ever had. The waves raced past us level with the tiny coaming, so brimming level that when I saw them under my elbows I simply stopped breath- 198 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH ing and waited. The Bantayan would drop to the bottom like a plummet if once she filled, and our chance of swimming that mile of yellow, angry flood sweeping the lake was slim, to say nothing of the miles of impassable swamp be- tween us and the back levees of the Teche plan- tations. I never was happier in my life than when the water-logged Bantayan crept slowly up to the line of wave-splashed trees, found a hole, and sneaked in. We fetched up behind a lily-bank and sat there watching the lake ahead. The gale blew up niftily in half an hour. The pi- rogue was lifted on the long undulations run- ning under the lily-bank, which creaked musi- cally in its waxy green leaves and bulbs. The water was beyond sounding depth here for our paddles. Again we began to wish we had stuck to our safe refuge on False Point Lake. As the lilies packed tighter we began to speculate on the chance of a night in the jam. There was not even a tree near us big enough to stand on. But as dark fell the seas began to run down. THE WATERHOUSE BOYS 199 By seven I advised making a run for the point where we had seen the house, and after fight- ing through the lily jam and drift, we paddled on, and an hour later, in the shimmer of a young moon, we drew up to the first land we had seen in nine da5^s over beyond the Grand Lake swamps. It was a neck of marshy, muddy soil running down from a road where stood the little house we had seen. A hasty camp was made, and at the house, which proved to be a forlorn store, we learned that this was Dotreve Land- ing and the head of the lake. The Cajun keeper was much amazed to be told we had paddled from Point Camille in that thirteen-foot pi- rogue. He shook his head — I doubt if he be- lieves it yet. The next day, Sunday, we loafed and cooked. Our rubber cloth on which the blankets were laid in the tent lay in ground so soft that the water gathered under us and made a bubbly sort of bed, but we had not minded. What we minded most was that the few inhabitants of Dotreve Landing said we could not possibly get up farther on the chain of lakes. 200 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH All " hell and high water " was out above, and, what was worse, none of them seemed to have any definite idea of the numberless chan- nels that poured into Lake Dotreve from the Red and Atchafalaya rivers. But they were mighty sure that our pirogue could not live in any of them — it wasn't any use of talking, a man simply couldn't paddle up Bayou La Romp or Bayou L'Embarrass! And if he could, where would he get to? There wasn't a house from here to Butte La Rose, where the Waterhouse boys kept the bees, and that must be fifty miles. Hen and I discussed this pessimism over our Sunday dinner. And by a chance, while Hen was off after blackberries later, I happened to glance lakeward, and saw a launch pounding up to the plank walk beyond the store. I raced down and found it was the Dewdrop, and she had come to bring some discharged men from a dredge boat up in the Butte La Rose country. A cheerful young engineer, Parmalee, was in charge, and it took no time for Parmalee to THE WATERHOUSE BOYS 201 invite us to go back with liim. The way I got Hen out of the blackberry patch and to work knocking down the tent and piling stuff into the Bant ay an was a caution. Parmalee wanted to get back and across the bad water before night. So while the Dewdrop chugged across Lake Dotreve, into Bayou Ben- tois, then Round Lake, all lonely and aswirl with sullen water, we "made supper," as the Cajuns say. And when we struck Bayou L'Embarrass {Lomhrass, they pronounce it), we agreed with the natives for once. We couldn't have navigated that rush of flood through the crooked;, narrow channel by any sort of means. It was a twenty-five-mile pull of terrific water, sometimes one hundred feet deep and not more than that wide. The stout little Dewdrop at one bend was whirled com- pletely around by an eddy, and then shook her stubby head and tore into the yellow flood like a bulldog. And all the time young Parmalee laughed with the light of battle in his eye. We made Long Lake and Bayou La Romp 202 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH more easily. Up here the flooded forests changed character. We saw no more moss- hung oak and cypress, but willows, gum, Cot- tonwood, and maples much like the Mississippi above the delta country. Parmalee, the launch engineer, had the usual incredulity when we explained our presence up the Atchafalaya lakes by saying we were after " pleasure." Honestly, we had no more explicit reason to give anyone! " I swanny," said he, " I don't know what to do with you. Nobody ever come runnin' into a headrise of these rivers for pleasure — to say nothing of coming in that crazy coffin of yours. I don't reckon you'd mind if I put you off at the head of La Romp. You can go hang out with the Waterhouse boys." Hen and I didn't mind anything. One place to go was as good as another. At least we had had a cheerful knocking around for the past ten weeks on that very principle. So at dark, around a flooded point, where the Grand River rushes out of the Atchafalaya and gives birth THE WATERHOUSE BOYS 203 to another twisting chain of lakes ere it joins it again just above salt water, we were put ashore on a floating platform. Parmalee yelled cheerfully to someone coming along the planks with a lantern : " Hey, Loyd, take care of these two guys, will you?" and then the Dew- drop was whirled off in the flood, leaving us to the mercy of the strangers' hospitality. We had it to the full. Two brown-skinned, hearty young fellows grabbed our duffle and got it above the reach of the hungry current. They asked us a few questions and then set to work raising our tent on the only spot of land still out of water. " If this blamed crevasse drowns you off of here, we'll stick you in with Len's goats," they said cheerfully. " Sorry to say our house is full. One of the boys just got married!" We were to sleep on the gallery of what was once a " sto' " but now was part of the living rooms. Under the " gallerie " the goats and pigs wandered, poking in the heaps of stranded lilies left by the floods. Len was a great talker, 204 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH a happy-go-lucky swamper, with a hospital- ity and fund of knowledge as wide as all out- doors. He had been a " sto'-keeper " and broke up at that — " had to live two years on that stock of groceries till I eat it all up myself, seeing I couldn't sell any," he put it. Then he had been a river pilot, but his wife objected, so now he stayed home and tended bees. Also he had a halfacre of truck garden when the Grand River wasn't over it. " When it is, I don't have to do any hoeing, anyhow," said Len with rare philosophy, " and when it ain't, I can depend on the goats and pigs taking it." His bee garden, back of the house, was the most picturesque tumbledown bit of swamp- yard I ever saw. Every hive was on stilts above the water and a perfect maze of honeysuckle, iris, hyacinths, red flags, palms, and banana trees, fig shrubs, umbrella trees, and grape- vines had grown up and entwined from beehive to fence and then to the house gallerie, and in and out of this wild, sweet-smelling bloom the scarlet tanagers and mocking birds sang and THE WATERHOUSE BOYS 205 flitted; while under it the big bullfrogs boomed and croaked. We sat that night on the front gallerie, facing the river, and Len enlarged on life as he knew it. " It's ornery sometimes. If the river's up, I can't fish; and if it ain't, I've no time. When my wife's well she pesters me to tend the bees, and when she's sick I have to wash dishes. I ought to make a great living here, but somehow t don't." No, he didn't. In the next three days, when we went " bush-catting " with Len up Whiskey Bay and lounged around the gallerie, we had more grand schemes unfolded to us than is imag- inable. Len was going to send for Angora goats and start a ranch; he was going to plant osier willows and manufacture baskets; he had a great idea of making paper from the water hyacinth bulbs; or an indestructible and prob- ably unsmokable corncob pipe; and his head was full of plans for the forming of stock com- panies to sell fish and drift logs on a co-opera- tive basis. 206 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH In short, Len was Colonel Sellers over again. Meantime, he eked out a living by taking board- ers — when one came along, which was seldom. Now and then a dredge crew stopped over at Len's landing, or a timber cruiser down from the big river. But he totally refused to accept a cent from us for staying there. His wife was ill, and Len sang as he washed the dishes, telling us betimes of his correspondence with the De- partment of Agriculture and the various soci- eties, mail-order houses, and promoters with which he had to do. He belonged to three detective associations and had an assortment of tin badges. In fact, Len was a "joiner" of the first water. But we found him lively and original. His wife took a humorous view of Len and life in general. " Len wants to go back to the river," she said, " but whenever Len says boats, I say bees — and bees it is." Len grinned appreciatively. Some guests had come in this evening from two shanty boats tied in the woods bank. Everybody stopped THE WATERHOUSE BOYS 207 over at Len's when they passed Grand River, for a word and a cup of coffee. He was the fount of gossip and advice. *' Folks around here have elected me to be justice of peace three times in the kst eight years," drawled Len, " but I swear I never get time to go down to Plaquemine and qualify. Still " — he added reflectively — " folks go right on electing me. Ain't a whole lot of justice busi- ness here anyhow. I just tell 'em what's what — and they say it's all right!" " If Len'd take care of the bees and trim the vines awa^^ from this house and the hives, we'd have a nice place and make an easy living," said Mrs. Len. " But it's river and boats, boats and river, with these Waterhouse boys. They were well named. Lands, if all these lakes and bayous in forty miles dried up and there wasn't any rain for a year, I couldn't send one of these men folks out to the woodpile without him com- ing back with wet feet. Look at that boy of mine out there sailing a home-made pirogue in that puddle! And look at them chickens going 208 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH to roost — why, even a Waterhouse chicken lias to scratch in mud!'* We laughed. The Waterhouse chickens, in- deed, were diligently searching for waterbugs in the pools about the coop, which was on the highest bit of land hereabout. Len laughed most of all at this sally. We went " bush-cattin' " again the next day, paddling our pirogues after Len into the flooded woods where he had six-foot lines tied to a long run of trees and shrubs, baited with shrimp caught under the water lilies. Len dis- covered four catfish on his bush lines — one a twenty-eight pounder. Also in his fyke nets we found five fine gaspergou, and Len was at peace with all the world. We would have a big 'Gou a la Creole to-night and he would sell the rest of his fish to the next trade boat for five cents a pound. We slept peacefully under our mosquito bars on the old " sto' " gallerie, the fragrance of the honeysuckle in our nostrils night long. I was awakened by the discontented goats out in the -ix '•'S^T' A terrapin hiintrr and liis '"hirtk' dogs" on Barataria Bay. THE WATERHOUSE BOYS 209 lot trying to butt down the door of the " big coop " where our outfit was stored. Hen later went out to see if the brutes had really gotten in, and was promptly chased out — and the fig- ure he cut galloping for the fence through the water pools with a big black billy in full charge after him, both splashing water tree high, was diverting — except to Hen. That day a big dredge boat came down Grand River and after much excitement and trouble was moored by the landing. The river ran deep and swift and the crew was inexperienced, it seemed. And Len was in a dilemma. He had promised to board this crew on its stop-over, but had forgotten all about it, and now his wife was sick abed. " And here seven big husky swampers pile in on me and I ain't got a thing in the house!" confided Len to us. " What's more, I can't cook!" We made some inquiries. The " drudge " men would be sore, Len added, and he just couldn't turn anybody away. He consulted 210 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH with his wife, but she had no solution. Hen and I had a consultation also, and then we went to Len sitting dismally on the gallerie watching the " drudge " crew profanely struggle with Grand River. " Len, my partner Hen is the best hand at chicken Maryland style that ever was," I said, " and I can make biscuit Cajun style that are some biscuit, if I do say it. And you get a wiggle on you and peel some potatoes and clean some cats and I'll make a cou'bouillion like Felix Landry taught me over on Lake False Point, and we'll give that dredge-boat crew the feed of their lives.'* Len looked up hopefully. "You will?" " We sure will — for the honor of Whiskey Bay!" And the way we worked the next hour was a credit to Whiskey Bay and all the region round about. We sat those seven men down to a dinner that they ate and ate and compli- mented — and one big swamper — when he found the fix we were in — helped wash up the dishes. THE WATERHOUSE BOYS 211 Then we all sat out on the gallerie and watched the swift-flowing river and listened to the bees — the poor wet-footed Waterhouse bees going to bed in their tumbledown hives on stilts at sundown. " You fellers, gentlemen," drawled Len, " sure saved the honor of Whiskey Bay. I'd been some mortified if I hadn't been able to feed those guests, and maybe some of 'em would a-hit me a clout, too." The " drudge " foreman assured him they would have stuck him in the mud head first among his goats and razorbacks. We got break- fast for the gang the next morning — more chicken, fish, biscuit, and spuds. They hauled in the check lines and went down river filled with praises and provender. Then Len " petered out." He sat on the gal- lerie and refused to wash another dish. " Going to take the johnboat and go up to Loyd's and make them wimmen folks come down here and clean up." So we sat day long on the gallerie and 212 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH watched the water go by. I began to under- stand why Len's neighbors could elect him three times to office and forgive him each time when he refused from sheer ineptitude to qualify. We had got into the dolce far niente ourselves. As witness, we reached this Never-Never Land and seemed perfectly content apparently to sit on the gallerie and smoke and stay and swap yarns with Len, or rather listen. For Len enlarged further. He wanted to become a boat builder. " Make 'em by the mile and saw 'em off long as you want," added Len. He was sure a sinkboat to find and raise the lost drift logs for the lumber company would pay. Or frogs for the N'Awlyins market. Or turkeys in the dry season — if there was one. Or his old love — willow baskets made from the osier. " The Gove'ment," said Len, " is mighty anxious for me to try it. They send me more stuff than you can shake a stick at about basket willers. But maybe " — he reflected — " they's more money in goats. Or sometimes I think I'd make a durn good book agent — or a detective.'* So he idled away life in his sweet-smelling THE WATERHOUSE BOYS 213 swamp-garden — a bit of Arcady, with the net of crape myrtle, alpha bush, jessamine and honeysuckle woven over everything. His an- cient " sto' " was a lamentable junk shop of old tackle, motor engine parts, seines, candles, and remnants of the grocery stock. Adjoining was a neat parlor with a rag carpet and on the table a big mail-order catalog, a Bible, and a book, " Thirty Years of Hell," by " an Ex-Priest." Also a New Orleans newspaper nine days old. " I keep right up to the now" said Len proudly. " When any bayou folks want the news, or the baby gets sick, or they want legal advice, they come down to my place. Some- times I see as many as five boats tied up here — come all the way from Butte La Rose or Choc- tahoula or Happy Land to ask me something. Yes, sir, sometimes they passes 'way in the mid- dle of the night and holler me out and ask some- thing. And sometimes they tie up to the bank and stay a month, sitting round here on the gallerie and talking." " Sit round and talk to Len and cod the goat," 214 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH commented Mrs. Len. " Land, they ain't a hustle in the whole bushel of 'em! Some stay a month and some just for coffee, and a body like Len can't just get no work done." It didn't worry Len. We " sat around the gallerie" considerably, day in and out, and to it came a happy-go-lucky itinerant lot of visit- ors. A broken-down dredge engineer, a Con- federate veteran and his half-Indian son, a man from Texas, a scholmaster down from drink, a former river pilot — all knew Len Waterhouse, each was sure of welcome, coffee, advice. For a livelihood they fished or picked up drift logs. " One way and another we all git on," said Len. " Sometimes I get such a raft of folks here that I think I'll cut loose that old shanty boat of mine and bump on down river and see the world. Some time " But he won't! He'll sit on his gallerie, roll a cigarette, stir his coffee as he watches the ragged woods across the yellow river, and com- plain amiably of life — and serve his neighbors. What more? THE WATERHOUSE BOYS 215 The fish boats will come and trade groceries for his catch and the visitors fetch the news. The brown river will bring its fullness to his door; it may be whimsical in delays, but one way and another, one will get a living out of it. One can be sure of that — and meantime listen to the bees and tree frogs and smell the honey- suckle. When the shades of night fell on this sweet wild garden Len would begin his complacent summing up of the day and the world. And by his side, as he tilted back his feet on the gal- lerie rail, a tree frog would tune up in the rain- v/ater trough that led to the barrel. And the more Len talked on, the louder the tree frog would sing. Finally, when the racket grew so shrill in our ears that Hen and I could no longer hear what Len was talking about, he would turn and seize the tree frog and throw it off in the grass. " There — Dod-burn you — don't you know better than to yell in a man's ears when he's talking to these gentlemen ? " 216 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH But the next evening the tree frog would be back on the rain barrel yelling loud as ever. Then there was another old bullfrog that used to live under the split pirogue that served as a sidewalk, placed upside down, from the gallerie to the big cistern. The only time one used this was when the weather was wet and then it was so slippery that a man couldn't keep a footing, but whenever one did step on the shell, the big bullfrog boomed out menacingly. Len, after the peace of the tree frog's exile, mellowed a bit on his family. " Here's my boy, Hubert, he does hate whiskey. Some folks won- der how we can raise a smartable boy like him down in these swamps, but talk about city edu- cation! Why, here he grows clean and sweet, and his mother teaches him to read and figger. He says his prayers at night, and when Brother Metreve comes in his gas boat once a month from Happy Land, there ain't nobody listens to the Word like my boy Hubert. He feels bad because old Fitzande's kids don't pray, and I heard him once just beg Francois to say a THE WATERHOUSE BOYS 217 j)rayer in Cajun. ' I guess,' says Hubert, 'that God knows some Cajun.'" Hubert, a brown-eyed, gentle lad, like all these woods youngsters, carried in his stove wood, chased the pigs out of the house lot, and sailed his little self-made boats on the flood ponds. My heart went out to him as to all these brave, simple, and efficient children of the wil- derness. Hubert knew all the Grand River boats — he could tell miles away by the exhaust or the whistle just whether it was the Queenie or the River Belle, and what cargo she would likely carry. He was a slim young nimrod. In the dried swamps of autumn he and Len hunted deer and squirrel, and in the wintei the ducks and water fowl to ship out to the New Orleans markets. Then in the spring, when the sun creeps high over the land and sends the melted snows down the Mississippi to crash through the Red and Atchafalaya, short-cutting to the sea, Len and his boy Hubert bush-catted and ran the drift logs until the July slackening of the water came, leaving the brown mud incrusta- 218 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH tions on tree and vine. Then the fish die, and the mosquitoes are ravenous, and the boats do not come to upper Grand River until the dreamy dry autumn brings the trapping and the hunting once more. So goes the life of the South woods, under the ever-soft skies of Louisiana. Coffee, cigar- ettes, a trifle of danger along with the indolence ; a mosquito to slap in the warm evenings ; enough of gossip and new faces to break the monotony — and alwaj^s, in every heart, that easy antici- pation of better times; of the days when the railroad will build a cut-off through the upper swamps and have a station only nine miles away; of the promise that the Plaquemine locks will be enlarged so that the Red River packets will come down to the Grand, and then " Up In Back " to the plantation country. " Some day! " said the bayou folk with satisfaction. Also there are some who believe that *' some day " the en- tire mighty Mississippi will grind its way down the Atchtfalaya cut-off to the Gulf and leave New Orleans stranded! Len, too, added gossip of his neighbors along THE WATERHOUSE BOYS 219 with affairs of the time. There was Dick Harp, a " comical cuss," who came down the river one night pretending to be the State inspector of seines and nets, yelling to all the camps and shanty-boats : *' Get out your seines. I'm com- ing to look at the size of your meshes ! " Now there wasn't a fisher that conformed to the legal size mesh, so every Cajun dropped his coffee and cigarettes, rushed to his seines, and hid them in the deep swamp or sunk them in the bayous. They kept them hidden a week until they discovered the " inspector " was Dick Harp. " Some of these swampers would a-killed Dick if he'd come back that spring," said Len. Dick was also the " cuss " who — being a part- ner in a lumber concern that hired two civil engineers to do some work down in the swamps — was offered a dollar by one of these city chaps to take him out to the canal when the task was over. Dick had come to camp rough-dressed and in his own gas boat, and the engineer did not recognize his own employer. " Old Dick,'* 220 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH said Len, " took the dollar and brought the man out and never said a word. Lordy, and Dick has enough money to buy all the college engi- neers in the hull gove'ment ! " Then there was " Hell fer 'Lection " Blake, who owned a steamer and hired a dredge to do some contract work down Belle River. "Hell fer 'Lection " started to tow the dredge down with his steamer, slammed the boat ashore on a bar in falling water, and spent the rest of the summer trying to dig his own boat out with the dredge instead of having the dredge work for him! Len was chivalrously inclined to the gentler sex. He asked if Hen and I were married and seemed disappointed. " And durn me if your hair ain't thinner'n mine, too. Well, you can't always tell. You got to eat a barrel of salt with a woman before you can know her — and some men don't like salt." That last night we talked late on the gallerie. And long after midnight, when we had turned in, I was aroused by voices outside, to discover THE WATERHOUSE BOYS 221 that some swamper had come in from his lonely camp to consult Len about a sick wife. And Len was up *' puttering " about in the left-over stock of drugs and patent medicines of his de- funct general store. They measured and tasted and discussed and Len was all eagerness to help. He sent the man away with advice called out long after the swamper was out on the dark river. " Give her a hull spoonful every hour and soak her feet in the mustard, and if she don't come 'round hard a-port and answer the helm, we'll mix up a little something else to- morry! " Good old Len! He was visibly perturbed when we told him that we would go on down Grand River that day. " Hate to see you go. Folks most generally stay round a month when they strike my place, so's we can have a little talk. I do like to meet folks 'at come right out of the world." We assured Len our regard was mutual ; and then, after minute instructions as to how we 222 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH should navigate some of the quick water below in Grand River, and where we should find camps in the wild country around Bay Natchez, see- ing we were fools enough to travel that way in a pirogue, we set off. Len stood on his gallerie and shouted us God- speed. "Any time you want to make a fool of yourself again, come back to Whiskey Bay. Some time you will — right back yere, raising bees and married to a swamp angel ! " CHAPTER XI ADRIFT WITH THE FLOATING GARDENS GRAND RIVER grew more wild and beautiful all that day's dash with the current, narrower, swifter, over its banks and surging the overhanging branches of the trees along with it so that the shores were a con- tinual motion and glitter of kaleidoscopic green and gray — cypress and oak in the background, with before them the young willow and hack- berry. We saw no one from Waterhouse's to Bayou Plaquemine, where we encountered a negro pirogue hunter with eighteen black squir- rels, and then discovered a store on the bayou bank. This was the first land we had seen all day. We traveled on again into the woods and made a fine camp in the willows six miles below. The weather had been so good of late that we 223 224 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH did not put up the silk tent, but rigged our mos- quito-bars to lines from tree to tree, and slept peacefully on our rubber cloth and blankets. Squirrel jambelaya for breakfast — and pan- cakes and honey from our good friends above. Then off, to encounter a great rush of water coming out of Pigeon Lake that danced us all day merrily in the midst of a river now filled with the beautiful floating hyacinths. We were twenty-two miles in this moving flower-bed with- out once being able to make a landing. Not that we tried — it was too splendid and novel a trip. We sat back lazily and smoked while the traveling garden bore us on. " Where," asked Hen somnolently, " are we gomg { " I don't know. Len said there was a big camp down on Belle River, where the chaps would be glad to see us." "Where's Belle River?" " I don't know exactly. Len said it was down somewhere where there was a big camp, where the chaps " THE FLOATING GARDENS 225 " Oh," said Hen, " you don't know where you're going!" *' Neither do you," I retorted, and the sun being fine and the morning fair, we couldn't see much use of worrying about it. If you will take a map of detail you will see the absolute uselessness of worrying. The Grand River in springtime jets out of the Atchafalaya, which spouts out of the swollen side of the Mississippi. The Atchafalaya wan- ders down through a dozen lakes and nameless bayous to the Gulf, and the Grand meanders its way alongside, with now and then an inter- locking arm or bayou running across to its neighbor, and these streams flow in and out, back and forth, in a crazy-patch fashion through unbroken forests. The only thing a fellow had to guess right on was to stick to Grand River and not be deceived by these cross bayous, which would whirl him off into the flooded and unpeo- pled north shores of Grand Lake, which is not made for pirogue-running, as we remembered well. 226 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH But Hen and I never gave it a thought. We " lazed " all that day in the lily drift, only work- ing once when we fought a way to shore to where a tiny f armlet offered a chance to buy eggs. Then a few miles below we found a small channel winding off northward through very tall cy- press. That interested us. We knew vaguely that all the water ought to run southeasterly to the Gulf fifty or seventy miles away. But this quiet baby stream, disappearing under the gloomy trees, showing clear water, was entic- ing. Without any conference we turned into it. It must go somewhere. Maybe to the long- sought Fountain. Who knew? We had a week's grub — why care? Anyhow, we floated off and into the heart of the biggest virgin cypress we had ever seen. Astonished and delighted with all this primal forest, we paddled on half an hour, and just at sunset we came out suddenly into a sedgy pool that opened on a quiet lake reflecting the sunset, while across, not a quarter of a mile away, uprose the sheer, grim gray of the mighty cypress once more. Never THE FLOATING GARDENS 227 had we come on a more beautiful spot than that silent, reed-lined mirror with the towering trees about. We paddled across the lake, wondering if it had an outlet. Then we saw a break in the lower end, a bit of marsh, and the distant blue of the evening woods. We headed for this, threaded a lagoon all but lily-choked, and found a stream flowing on as placid and clear as if the roaring yellow of the upper river floods had never found it. As indeed they had not. We were in the upper head of Bay Natchez, but did not know it. We paddled on for an hour, the cypress withdrawing itself until it was again the gray iron wall, while between was the soft green of willowed ridges, acres of purple lilies, bright grasses, and reflecting pools. We paddled down the stream, warily seeking the main channel, for the spot did not offer a camp. And after some miles of this we rounded a marshy bank to dis- cover ourselves once more in the silent and deep- flowing Grand River, the woods on either side and the unending di-ift of the hyacinths to the sea. 228 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH It was dark by now. We battled with the flood and the flowers some time before we could make a landing, and at that were forced ashore almost a mile below the spot we had first picked out. It was amazing where all the lilies came from. The floods must be pushing them out of every swamp from Red River to the Gulf. But we got to land at last where neither lilies nor drift logs impeded and made a hasty camp, broiled some bacon, made tea, and rolled in our blankets. We had put the tent up here, for a storm was brewing in the southwest, and besides we had an idea of looking about this wild bit of woods and water. A Sunday of amazing glory awaited. I rather think of all the four months' knocking about, that camp below Bay Natchez was the best. We saw no one in two days. And the life of the woods and water was varied and un- usual. The trees were filled with songsters, bright-hued and flitting, making music all the day, and out over the river black and snowy herons floated. Loons, ducks, and yellow-limbed THE FLOATING GARDENS 229 gallinules were circling above the sedgy flat across from us, and a white egret sailed over the lily drift. And as we proceeded with the breakfast-getting, a white-headed eagle floated above us, looking down with sharp, flitting eyes to our humble camp, as if questioning the advis- ability of allowing us to stay. After a contenting meal and leisurely smoke we paddled out on the river to look about the bend. The curving forest hid all view below us. The giant gars were splashing the water under the lily drift. The channel here flowed much easier and had lost its yellow, angry hue of the flood water. Along our shore, in the bend, where the slower water from Bay Natchez had the right of way, it was even clear and dark with the peculiar swamp luster which we had noticed often in the untouched deep swamp. And for miles below Bay Natchez, which is merely a huge pocket of the drainage flow from the rivers above, we found the black water and the " white water," as the natives call the flood, running side by side. 230 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH We went back to camp, having much diffi- culty with the lilies in reaching shore. In an hour the breeze sprang up and the rest of the day we were hopelessly blocked in. The water plants packed so tightly along the bank that it took some effort to part them when we wanted to dip a bucket of water from the stream. Sunday, as usual, was washday, and soon we had every dud in camp hanging to the bushes, while we lolled about in an Edenic comfort. " And not an Eve in forty miles, thank Heaven," Hen said contentedly. " It's great ! " So we smoked and idled. And as fine luek fell we discovered a trim little Mobilian turtle among the driftwood and had him cleaned and in a pot in no time. He made a great stew with tomatoes (canned, of course), onions, potatoes, bacon, and a bit of garlic and thyme. And as we cooked this turtle contentedly we found an- other and put him in the pirogue, where we carried him for the next week scratching around under the duffles and poking his red-and-striped head among the canned goods in a sort of in- THE FLOATING GARDENS 231 jured way, as if it was a mean trick to shut him among all these edibles without a can- opener. The wind shifted a point or two and began to move the four-acre patch of hyacinths out of our cove in the afternoon. Then we went fish- ing, still in our state of e pluribus unum, as Hen had it. What was the use of clothes, anyhow? We were astonished at the lack of mosquitoes — and also at the lack of fish. Privately I was glad — never did like to fish much. Even Hen, with all his silver-tipped outfit, lolling in the end of the canoe without a stitch on his hide, a cig- arette in his mouth, seemed pleased that the fish didn't bother us. We had grown shiftless, I'll admit. But it seemed good. Even a fellow's tobacco down in this Cajun country was sort of easy-going and fritter-minded, not caring whether it burned or not. The egrets — snowy-plumed and stately — were flying up the silent river. A great gray heron stood on one leg across from us on a log, reflected perfectly in the slow-shifting mirror. 232 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH And long angles of ducks went above to their feeding-ground in the prairie which we could see to the west below the cypress wall. As soon as Hen and I could reasonably excuse each other from fishing we went ashore, put on some clothes, and built a roaring bonfire, for the May night was cool. We sang lullabies to each other until nine and then turned in the blankets, first making our usual snake-inspection when we stayed more than one night in a spot. Not a serpent in our Eden. "Bully!" murmured Hen. "This spot is right-o. Let's stay till we're out of grub!" But we didn't get through that night without incident. About midnight, when we were lost to the world, one of those sudden, ripping gales hit us and for an hour the air was filled with blown twigs and moss, with now and then a limb from one of the cypress crashing down near us. We lay in our blankets, watching the incessant bursts of lightning through the bellying walls of the tent. Several times it lifted wildly in the gusts and then — down it came! . n bX) THE FLOATING GARDENS 233 [With it came the rain. We lay there under the clammy silk and discussed the weather far from amicably. It was two o'clock before the storm was over, and then we had to get out shiveringly and draw the tent back on its pegs, slopping around in the water pools and inci- dentally dragging our blankets into the mud. But that was a casual incident. When we crawled out again the day was clear and a cool norther was blowing — very cold, indeed, for the tenth of May in Louisiana. We felt so chilled in the shades of the great wet trees that I proposed breaking camp and going on down this uninhabited river. We got away at ten o'clock, pushing the canoe out into a singing, creaking lily field and being swept away at once with it on the norther. A mile below we got ashore on a reedy bank and spent an ineffectual hour trying to photo- graph the egrets and loggerhead turtles about the pools. But they were too wild, and Hen had also his usual trouble with that camera. It was, as I had remarked before, endowed with 234 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH so many stops, plugs, throttles, timers, sema- phore signals, and nobody knows what else that by the time all these were ready and Hen had studied up his literature to see about the time and lighting and the temperature and the price of wheat at Duluth, the blamed bird or wood- chuck or whatever it was had got tired of pos- ing and had gone off. Then Hen invariably accused me of scaring it away. Then we had to ungear that mysterious cam- era and repack it, and paddle down this aston- ishingly beautiful and lonely river. As we looked ahead over the nearer shore we saw higher ridges apparently, a fine hill with a smiling countryside stretched beneath. It was that old fascinating illusion of \he swamps — a vista of marsh appearing to be gol- den stubble, a line of mangroves like a well- ordered hedge about a decent farm lot and back of it the pasture slopes of New England or Wisconsin — it was incredible that we were look- ing upon nothing but woods, and woods whose feet were deep in the black cypress water! THE FLOATING GARDENS 235 But a few miles on we were startled by the shrill yelp of a whistle far in the forest. " Forgey's camp," said Hen; "it's time we were near it." But it was not. We came about a bend to a " pullboat," alongside of which was a quarter- boat with a good-natured darky poking his head from the kitchen to greet us. We climbed up and met the boss and the bookkeeper. It was Van Norman's camp, and the pullboat engine was " snaking " the big cypress out of a cutting a mile away by means of a steel cable that ran up the " road " through the forest. We were made welcome, dined with the hospitable crew, engineer, boss, clerk, and other few white men of the camp. Out of the woods poured a wet and dirty army of swampers at noon. Van Norman was proud of his camp and gang. He insisted on taking us up the pull- boat road after the meal, but I decided to go hunting in a light " runnin' pirogue " in the swamp. Hen went back to the " slashin'," and had a most diverting time trying to keep dry 236 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH by jumping from log to log on the pullboat road. He gave it up after a while and went in as the swampers go — regardless of the water. I went in far enough to get a sense of the for- lorn aspect of the forest after the " falling crew " is through with it — the gigantic cypress thrown in every direction and the skinned young saplings struggling up through the wreck from the water. Van Norman insisted that we occupy the quarterboat with his white men, but we pre- ferred to make camp, so at dusk we dropped down stream to a fine grove of oaks on the high- est bit of land we had seen in weeks — quite six feet above the river. Latanier palms, hack- berry, brilliant young maples grew about the point, while back of us was a perfect mat of blackberry vines. We fell on them before breakfast with gusto. "Let's stay a week!" said Hen. "Blackberry smash for lunch and blackberry pie for dinner. And listen to the birds sing! Every blamed one of 'em is probably good to eat ! " THE FLOATING GARDENS 237 We had quests for breakfast — two shy young Creoles who were paddling from Forked Horn Bayou, they said. They could not talk much English, but when we motioned to the coffee they accepted with enthusiasm. Then along came young Keller, the bookkeeper, just to see how we were making out and to ask us up to Van Norman's to dine. We all made coffee again and drank It about the coals — three times since we got out of bed! Again, ye neurasthenics, how about five cups of coffee before ten a.m.? Before we came in the big woods and forgot the banal towns, one brew of the stuff would have demoralized me. And this was coffee — not the boiled Northern concoction. We could drip it now with any wandering hunter of the swamps and earn his commendation. We went fishing in the afternoon — lazily. And the fish bit lazily, not seeming to care whether they got hooked or not. We paddled to the pullboat, dined with the boys and stayed until ten o'clock. Then we pulled away from 238 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH the camp, dropped easily down river in the star- light, well pleased with ourselves, until Hen suddenly shifted, looked around at me, and remarked : " By the way, do you know where our tent is?" I didn't. It dawned on us that we had been shot by the current into the narrowing part of the river where the great trees overhung, mak- ing an impenetrable darkness. And somewhere along here we must find that camp! We could see nothing, except now and then the dim top of a tree clump against the stars, and we could hear the gurgle and whisper of the river under the overhanging boughs. We didn't care par- ticularly about being capsized on these current- swept limbs. *' Gone too far," said Hen, and after a con- sultation we came about and paddled up. We racked our brains to think of some distinguish- ing mark by the tent — and couldn't. " There was a clump of palms right back of us," I murmured, " and a big oak " THE FLOATING GARDENS 239 " Lot of good that is! Can you see a thing? " Then Hen sniffed— " Hal" "Ha— what?" *'I have it. I smell it I" "Smell what?" " Pie ! — camp — home! " "Darned if you do!" " Yes, I do. That blackberry pie that drib- bled so — and you laid it on the big stump right by the water! Hard-a-starboard ! Dig!" Now did two lost woodsmen ever retrieve themselves with a blackberry pie? We did. I told you we would tell you something you never heard of before. In the curriculum of wood- craft, find a rplace for blackberry pie. Hen could nose his way around the world in the wake of a blackberry pie. In ten minutes we were ashore, struggling through brush, feeling about, striking matches and — then I rammed my fist square down into that blackberry pie. Next morning it was a total wreck, with many ants trying to claim salvage on it. Hen went back to the pullboat to try for 240 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH more pictures of Van Norman's crew. I bor- rowed Keller's " runnin' pirogue " and went after squirrels down the river. I pumped one load of No. 7 at a big brown eagle and he merely smiled down at me. Here and there, on the gray bark of the trees, a squirrel dodged about. I had to pot them as the canoe shot by in that dancing current. Let me tell you, shoot- ing squirrels from a pirogue calls for some deli- cacy of judgment. The kick of the gun will upset as ticklish a bit of wood as I was in unless one has his shot figured to a nicety. You get a glimpse of the squirrel swinging from limb to limb up in the filigree of green against the light, you swing hard on the paddle with your right hand, bringing the pirogue hard about, raising the gun with your left as you come bow-on with the quarry. Then — quick or never! You drop the paddle, brace your knees on the coaming, swing your shoulders tensely back, bring the gun up, find your squirrel, and shoot just as the sight comes squarely over the pirogue's nose. I tried one broadside shot and nearly went over Site of Jran T.aFitte's fort at (Iraiid 'J'crre. THE FLOATING GARDENS 241 in that swift water. And once over I never could have got back to camp until they came to look for me, hanging to some half -submerged tree. I managed to bag three squirrels, having no end of difficulty in finding them, for they dropped plump down in the water through a magnificent tangle of vines and bamboo brier. But it was novel and exhilarating sport, giving one a thrill worthy of bigger game, for one was fighting every minute against the treacherous boils and eddies sucking under the jungle banks. I killed a huge fish-hawk as I paddled back, catching it so fairly above me that it fell straight down, landed on mj^ knees, and sat there glaring up. I heard a shout of laughter at this, and discovered a Cajun hunter balancing in his pi- rogue, holding to the twig of a tree, and look- ing at me. " Das good! " he cried. " But, man, don' yo* try sooch fancy shoots out-a dat leetle coffin! No Yankee can run dat pirogue ! " I was some set up when I got back to Van 242 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH Norman's to discover that the boys had given me the most treacherous bit of cypress shell in the camp — and thought I wouldn't dare shoot from it. I didn't tell them of the practice I'd had pirogue hunting with Florion Landry. Mangy, the colored cook, insisted on stewing that fish-hawk for us, but we declined. So he served it to the black hands. They said it was great. Maybe, but it didn't look so. I'd already eaten mink fricassee and alligator gar and shark meat, but somehow that stewed hawk didn't re- semble anything that we thought would do our hair or dyspepsia any good. " Mangy," said Hen, " give it to the boys with our blessing. I'm feeling too fine now to experiment with hawk stew — ^we'll be mighty generous, Mangy, and let you have all of it." Thirty miles below we stopped at Forgey's Belle River camp. Big Captain Forgey gave us a genial wel- come. He had heard two strangers were headed his way from Len Waterhouse's, the news coming in that mysterious and swift channel by which gossip travels in the wilderness. THE FLOATING GARDENS 243 Forgey's was the " big model camp " of the Grand Lake country. Every building and fence was whitewashed and no jumble of dis- carded log machinery was about. " Things go here like a clock," said the Captain, " and I got the best crew, white and black, in the big woods. Come in and stay a couple of weeks and see for yourself." That was the usual way. If you stayed less than two weeks the woodsmen thought you must be peeved about something. This was a "skidder camp," and the man- agers boasted that '" skidding " was a better way to get the timber out of the deep swamp than *' pullboating." The place where the logs were cut was four miles " up in back." A miniature railroad track led off across the swamp water to this cutting. The next day, after a pleasant night's chat in the company's store and a sleep in real beds with real sheets in the rooms above, we were taken out to the " slashin' " where the eighty black men of the outfit worked. The little wood-burning engine, with us sit- ting on the water tank, drawing a rattling line 244 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH of log trucks up the crazy track, went off in the most dismal bit of forest we had seen. Up at the " slashin' " the trees had been " deaded '* a year or more and the vast stretch was lifeless and grim standing out of the black water. Here and there the " fallers," working in pairs, were attacking the cypress; and let me say that one of the finest things we saw was a huge black man, naked to the waist, his back and biceps shining with the sweat, standing with one foot in his pirogue and the other holding by the toes in a notch of the tree, while he hewed the great trunk down. There's a trick! When the tree was ready to fall, the chopper dropped back in his canoe and with a single backward shoot took himself far out of danger as the big trunk struck the water and rebounded high in the air. The swamp niggers were a picturesque lot, more independent than the plantation darkies, moving about with an insolent swagger at the store, buying toothpick shoes and high-priced clothes to wear down to Mawgan City to see THE FLOATING GARDENS 245 their women. But they stood apart for the big Captain, who knocked one of them down when he objected to giving up his seat in the boat to a white man. It is a rough man's world, the Louisiana cypress swamps. Forgey was a Western type, a devil-may-care chap who had the reputation of being the best camp boss on the river. He had his own twenty- two-miles-an-hour motorboat when he wanted to get down to tidewater at Morgan City. He was proud, too, of the camp grub — fresh eggs, cow milk, green peas, beans, rice, potatoes, cabbage, pork shoulder — nearly all raised by some of his old niggers on the high spots around camp. Cow milk and fresh eggs! Hen and I did stay a week, sure enough. I put in the time painting the Bantayan, while Hen took more fruitless pictures. The white men of the camp were few but in- teresting. There was Minas, the Mexican en- gineer of the launch, Stanbury the clerk, a fine young Mississipplan; Adams, a Creole, who brought in supplies ; and two small boys, one the 246 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH machine shop helper and the other a fire guard at the skidder. Very silent, manly little chaps these were. The " fallers " were all negroes, but the " tree deadeners " were Creoles. How- ever, the race question seemed to adjust itself, and life in the big swamp camp went on amica- bly. The head cook was up at three o'clock each morning, and the men at four. Coffee was served at once to all who wished to visit the kitch- en in line. In fact, it was the custom for any man to drop in, if work did not engross him, for a cup of coffee any time of day. Then the camp buildings became deserted, for at five- thirty everyone was off to the woods until noon when the little train pulled in and the hungry swampers made a rush for the cookhouse. Then back once more until six. Up in the slashin' the men were divided into gangs; fallers, sawyers, track layer's, riggers, tonghookers, and signalmen. There were two skidder machines working and these drew the logs to the railroad tracks and loaded them on the trucks by means of a rude aerial cable way. THE FLOATING GARDENS 247 The riggers attached the logs to these cables which were suspended from huge treetops here and there; and then the engine raised them bod- ily and they came swinging on over the under- brush and water to be dropped on the trucks. Then the loaders adjusted them, and when the train was made up it chugged out to the river camp four miles away. It was rude, rough work, the men often in water above their waists, but the day's grind went through cheerfully. I finished painting the pirogue, and she was very gay in her red, black, and yellow. Captain Forgey told us a funny story of how, one time, as a joke he told all the Creole traders and trap- pers round about that they must jiame their boats before they could land at his wharf. This bothered one old fisherman very much, for he couldn't think of a name for his scow and couldn't write it anyway. As his was a boat that called every Monday, the genial Captain sug- gested it be called : " Run Monday," and he made a stencil for the M'sieu Skipper. The next week M'sieu Skipper of the craft 248 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH came back and very proudly with Run Monday across the bows — upside down and backwards I He had hauled his boat out and turned her over when he put the stencil on her wood. " Dog- gone him," said Captain Forgey, " that boat's running around here yet. He got the joke on me and didn't know it ! " Sunday in camp was a lazy day. I remember the night before that we had discussed fishing, and Hen had casually complained that fishing had been poor. He would liked to have had some fish. Well, the next morning about daybreak we were awakened by the most terrific explosion seemingly right under our noses. I crawled out of bed and looked to see if a boiler hadn't blo^vn up somewhere. On the end of the wharf stood an interested group. Out on the river were four boats loaded with darkies yelling and splashing and rowing about. " What the blazes is the matter? " murmured Hen sleepily. A man grinned up pleasantly. " Oh, we heard THE FLOATING GARDENS 249 you gentlemen say you-all liked fish so we sent the boys out there this mawnin' to dynamite the river." Now I call that hospitality. " The boys " brought in a bushel or so of gaspergou and cat- fish so all the camp breakfasted on them. I hear my sporting friends murmur something about the game and fish laws? Quien sabe? I reckon they haven't got far, down in the deep swamp, with laws and regula- tions. We lounged in the shade of the store gallerie. It was about the sixteenth of May and just be- ginning to warm up a bit like summer. Minas> the handsome Mexican engineer, was hollow- eyed and languid. The boys joshed him about just getting back to camp for breakfast from a trip to see his girl at Four Mile Bayou. Minas yawningly admitted it. I asked Minas why, as it was Sunday he didn't make a day of it, too, and he sighed. " Oh, I got another girl up Little Godell and maybe dis afternoon, I'll be passin' dat way." 250 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH "Girls — girls!" growled Hen, "here it goes once more. Right off here in the peace of the woods somebody lugs in the subject. I'm free, white, and twenty-one, and I protest " Minas waved his hand languidly out to the river. And I swear to you I looked to see one of the prettiest (Hen doesn't know I'm writ- ing this) sights I ever looked on. It was ten o'clock of a bright May day and the sun shone down on a sparkling river banded everywhere with the wild hyacinths in full bloom and drift- ing with the tide. And among the flowers were two push-boats loaded with Creole girls in bright dresses. One girl in each boat was standing up, working the long oars easily with a graceful step forward, a turn of the wrist, a slow recovery with the step back as she feathered the blades. And the others sat in bow and stern trailing lilies in the water and singing! I was amazed. What and where? " Come from dat ball down Lake Verret," drawled Minas, " and just getting home up Four-Bayou." THE FLOATING GARDENS 251 The store keeper, the engineer, and the loung- ing white boys turned longing eyes toward the flower-circled galleys. The dark-eyed girls looked back, but went slowly on, singing and pushing their heavy boats against the lily drift. They were rowing twelve miles home after an all-night dance that did not end 'til sun rise. And how they had strength left to sing at the task was beyond our city minds to grasp. But I will not soon forget the pretty, wholesome sight, nor the drawling comments of clean, kindly humor with which the young men of the camp looked after them. Sunday night as we sat about the store gal- lerie, our hosts proposed that we go to " meetin'." I looked around. Nothing in camp looked like divine services. " Oh, that's all right, sure ! " went on Captain Forgey, hospitably. " There aren't any just now but I can scare some up. Here you, Hog- jaw," he continued addressing an idling young black, " go over to the bunkhouse and tell the 252 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH boys we're going to have church — and we want it good." And in about ten minutes we heard the most fearful cater-wauling over in the whitewashed sheds imaginable, a pounding and hobbling about in a rude dance and now and then a yell to Heaven, " I reckon," drawled Minas, " Crump and Hogjaw and Ole Doc Fortune has got 'em or- ganized.'* When we arrived at the bunkhouse the center of the floor was filled with dancing darkies, lan- terns in hand, swinging and swaying about, while others in the bunks kept time with their hands, and feet, interspersed now and then with whoops and calls upon the Lord. We listened with in- terest. I thought it was a joke at first, but it was not. In half an hour the negroes had worked themselves up to a frenzy, writhing, twisting, rolling their eyes, the sweat pouring from them as they danced and chanted, while a cloud of dust rose up that all but hid the cele- brants. THE FLOATING GARDENS 253 As far as I could make out their chief hymn went: " Ah tek dat boat to Buelah Lan' — Oh— Oh— Ah— eee ! De Lawd done mek me a present gran' — Oh— Oh— Ah— eee ! And Ah's g'wine fo' to see! Sistern, bredern, come along — come along, Fo* Ah's g'wine fo' to see ! " There were other chants mostly unintelligible, but consisting now and then of words strung together without reason, or meter, interspersed with " Oh, Lawds! " and " Lawd, save us! " all to the accompaniment of thumping shoes and shaking of heads on the part of the spectators. The " meetin' " went on after we had gone, and finally the boss had to send a man to repress it. But long after I was in bed, there came the fit- ful shouts and chants of the black swampers, with now and then a rich, deep voice raised in some old time melody. CHAPTER XII DOWN LA FOUECHE IN A " GAZZOLINE '* WE left the hospitable swampers of Belle River the next afternoon, paddling three miles down to Bayou Magazine and then off through the woods to Lake Verret. It was sundown when we reached this silent and beautiful sheet of water which stretched far to the West but was not here more than a mile wide. We saw a white shell beach directly across under the trees and made for it. The lumber- men had given us directions which would mark the entrance to the new canal connecting Lake Verret with Bayou La Fourche which we had decided to reach in order to get to the coast at Grand Isle. We still had it in mind to take up Allesjan- dro's offer made two months ago at Clark Che- 254 IN A ''GAZZOLINE*' 255 niere and go visit his master, Baron Gaal at Cut- ler's Island, and besides we were beginning to feel the heat of the Louisiana summer and wanted to smell the cool sea. Yet I declare it was with a genuine feeling of regret that we set the Bantayan's nose eastward and homeward after this footless three months' wanderings in the lower coast bayous. It had been fine, and that night as we camped on the tiny ridge of shell beach along the lake — on one side open water and on the other an impass- able swamp of gum, cypress, and vine-tangled oak whose pools were reflected in the big camp fire — Hen and I were silent. It was a great camp, and probably our last of the real wilder- ness. A storm was winking away over the Gulf to the south, and this sheet lightning and the red leap of the fire lit up the stirring masses of the moss overhanging us, — a scene as weird and ghostly as one could imagine, but the great cy- press somehow had never daunted us, as we had been told it would. " Those terrible woods will get on your 256 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH nerves," someone had assured us in New Or- leans, "and fever — and snakes " And we had found nothing but beauty in the deep swamp, and never a day of fever with all our three months of sleeping on the ground or in shacks where there was no ground to sleep on. And snakes — well they had become a joke. The snake dope syringe had never been touched since the time we experimented on the nigger from Grand Caillou. " It's all in the know-how," murmured Hen, "and somehow we've learned the know-how. Took some hard knocks and some chances, but it was worth while — everything. What you go- ing to do when you get back into store clothes again?" " I don't know. I hate to think " " So do I. And darned if I will. I'm going to roll in!" We spent an uneventful day, washing up things for the next stage of travel, and went fish- ing in the evening. We hooked a soft shell turtle and stewed him shell and all — an experiment IN A 'GAZZOLINE' 257 that turned out splendidly, for the shell came out as gelatinous lumps, very palatable. "And glory be I" murmured Hen — "not an egg in him — or her! " Hen was always touchy about turtle eggs, girls, and romance, as I have remarked before. Two shy young chaps came into camp at night, having seen our fire. They were lily guards employed to keep the hyacinths out of the canal up the lake and through them we learned it would be no trick at all to get to La Fourche in our shallow draft boat. So the next morning we went up the lake, turned into a tiny channel and paddled twelve miles of beautiful going, now in bright sun, now in glittering show- ers out of the blue and white sky. The iris and hyacinths were all about us, and the blackberries overhung the margin with beyond the ever- changing forest. But gradually this fell away to thin woods, a cleared field now and then, and finally we came upon the dredge three miles from La Fourche bayou where we had coffee with the crew who made us, also, the loan of the inevitable 258 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH mule cart to tote our outfit over an unfinished mile of the cutting. From this point we got into the placid La Fourche with its ancient and well-kept small farms on each side of the levee and we went five miles up to Napoleonville where we had, a month ago, ordered our mail sent. We had not had a letter since we plunged into the Grand Lake woods from New Iberia, April 22. To-day was May 20. 'Not had we seen a newspaper. In fact we had become astonishingly indifferent to the world of men. I remember the intense inter- est we had acquired in each day's happenings, the woodsmen we met, the weather, the grub, the water, and the work — but of the outside world not a thing! Hen failed to get the pack of films he ex- pected at Napoleonville. We dined in some state for two ragged-shirt, khaki-trousered vaga- bonds, at the best restaurant the village afforded and then decided — as we felt fine and fit, even after our twenty-six miles of paddling that day — to go back down La Fourche. Somehow a IN A '' GAZZOLINE'' 259 town didn't look good to us after the glory of the swamp. We paddled for three hours that night. The starlight made the bayou banks wonderful masses of shadows lit up by the unending line of wild, white roses growing over the old levee. Not a house was visible, nor a sound heard, yet over the levee we knew almost continual settlement ran for sixty miles down La Fourche. We were anxious to be out of the "house country," as Hen had it. It was long after midnight when we left off following the stream with its rose-scented air and starry shadows, drew the pirogue up the bank, laid down our blankets and slept in such peace as only out-door men and tired men know. Break- fast we had on the grassy levee in the sun, and then off to reach Thibidoux at noon. This was a quaint, sleepy, ante-bellum town, looking like a bit of French New Orleans drop- ped down in a smiling country-side. It had the same narrow stone " banquettes," closely shut- tered first floors to the houses and the ornate 260 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH galleries above where the people sat in the even- ing looking down on the placid street life. A guitar tinkled somewhere off in a clematis-hid- den veranda and we caught a glimpse of white, cool looking girls in doorways and on the streets. It was " Assumption Day," and business was shut down entirely. There was a " Ball," of course, and even we — the ragged strangers — were asked by some soft-voiced young men in front of the " drugsto'." But we had arranged with Captain Fran- cisco of an ice boat lying in the bayou to haul us down to Lockport, for shame to tell, Hen had got suddenly lazy. He said it was stomach ache which the waitress at the Thibidoux cafe had given him! And somehow, after these weeks of paddling the Bantayan across rough lakes and treacher- ous rivers, it appealed to me. Maybe it was that sun 'way down in Louisiany! At least, after a night sleeping on the grassy levee, face up to the stars, listening to the tinkle of the guitars at the ball, we piled our luggage on Capt. Francisco's boat before dawn. The IN A "GAZZOLINE" 261 Italian bayou men, mostly oyster fishers up from the Caillou and Tambalier camps — were already out on the luggars about us. Each had its little charcoal brazier fire and breakfast was a-going. So was the ball, and with the music we heard the Creole girls singing ! Amazing is youth. We had slept away their hours. But there was work ahead. Francisco's gasoline boat swung off from the night-damp wharf, and now the soft mists hid the town from sight, a last light twink- ling in the ball room, and the pleasant laughter coming. We could see something of La Fourche country from the top of the boat when day came. Pepper and oak trees, the eaves and galleries of quaint little homes, with roses over their roof trees, bits of cane and corn fields, peaceful pas- tures with fat cattle grazing, and beyond — ever beyond — the grim blue wall of the deep swamp out " beyond the forty-arpent line " — the cy-' press forest from which we had come. North or south as we looked over the strip of planta- tions, always the woods were there calling to us. 262 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH The skipper hailed us to breakfast. Capt. Francisco could speak no English, but his dreamy-eyed seventeen year-old son did the hon- ors. Vincenzo was the engineer and had many comments to make on other craft we passed. Later we came down on a big luggar moored be- side the bank, her crew lolling under the red sail which was warped over the spar to form an awn- ing. Vincenzo hailed them and we laid along- side. And to my surprise I saw that the skipper was a young Cajun whom we had met over in New Iberia, with whom we had dripped many a pot of coffee and therefore were blood brothers of the road. He was the one of the coterie who had loaned his knowledge to the discussion of Evangeline and the schoolmaster's drama down on Capau's shantyboat under the bridge. "What you-all doin' hea'?" he demanded. " Yo* sho' ought to be drownded ! " " What are you doing here? How did you ever get the Little Brunette away over in this country? '* Octave smiled languidly. IN A '' GAZZOLINE" 263 " Ah came hea' fo' a load of watermelons. But dey tell me on La Fourche watermelon won't be ripe fo' month yet.'* Young Vincenzo laughed gleefully. " Man, you goin' to wait a month fo' watermelon? " Octo' waved his cigarette. " Ah sho am. Dat sou' easter he blow all dis mont', and I couldn't get back to Mawgan City nohow." Young Vincenzo of the Good Child laughed joyously again at young Octo' of the Little Brunette. " Man, why you no buy a gazzoline? " " Ah don't want no gazzoline. Mah girl down in Mawgan City say: 'Boy, if yo' put gazzoline in dat luggar, Ah neve' ma'y yo' ! ' Gazzoline give mah girl a head ache." So the Good Child laid along side the Little Brunette all the sunny afternoon while we drank coffee, ate rice and shrimp, sauce piquante, and listened to talk of girls and gazzoline. Octo', it appeared, had conceived the brilliant idea, now that the oyster season was over at the Teche ports, of bringing his red-sailed luggar up La 264 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH Fourche and getting the first load of water- melons for the New Orleans markets. So he sailed leisurely down the Teche, into the Atcha- falaya, out into the Gulf of Mexico, into Tam- balier Bay, up Grand Caillou into La Fourche until the winds went down on him, when he as leisurely tied up to the bank and waited for the watermelons to ripen. All the weeks we had been fighting across the flooded country to the upper La Fourche, he had been peacefully coming around by sea. Happy, brown-skinned Octo' with his girl, and waiting for his watermelons! Octo', idling under his red sail, " making breakfast " on his charcoal furnace, lying back on the Little Bru- nette hatch, cigarette on lip, day after day, wait- ing for the watermelons to ripen ! After all, maybe Octo' is right. But Vincenzo, after the Good Child was off down the bayou, looked back at Octo' ; " I sho' never sit dat way a month waitin' on a load of watermelons. I'd put in a gazzoline and see the worl'." The " gazzoline " pounded on between the IN A " GAZZOLINE" 265 green, narrow banks, scaring now and then a group of yellow-legged geese, a grazing cow, or a flock of the dirty, repulsive vultures which are so irritatingly tame and fat, they will hardly get out of one's path. Here and there a negro mammy was washing clothes by the bayou side with a catfish line tied to the leg of the stool hold- ing her tub. About her the clothes were spread on the grass, and the black Egyptian women in their red and yellow head-dresses stopped to look, and looked as long as the " gazzoline " was in sight. I looked back, too, and never did I see a catfish bite, nor a wash finished. It was all like Octo' and his watermelons. Now and then the Good Child tied up to the bank, Francisco got ashore to hold the headline and over the levee appeared a head or two. A leisurely conversation ensued, growing more ex- cited, and just when Hen and I were concluding that a Black Hand feud was about to be fought out between our crew and the villagers, the alter- cation would subside — and up over the bank would come two men carrying a sack of potatoes. This took place so many times that Hen and 266 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH I finally went ashore to peer over the levee. And there, spread before us, was a bit of Arcady again! A green-embowered house, the roses climbing over the fence along the dusty, bril- liant road; and beyond the almond and the um- brella trees, the orange and the pomegranate bloom, was the ever-smiling land stretching to the forest wall dim and blue and far. The Arcadians would hear the Good Child whistle and would come over the bank to inquire the price of potatoes. Captain Francisco would quote a price quite one cent under what the Ar- cadians insisted they ought to get. Then, at once, objurgation, recrimination, lamentation. However, it ended invariably with the Arcadi- ans lugging a sack of spuds over the bank and depositing it on the foredeck of the Black Hand ship. Then the Arcadians and the Black Hand- ers delivered each themselves of another frevent peroration, waved bon soir, and went their ways. Sometimes when you're tired of soul, wander down La Fourche in the May sunshine and look IN A ''GAZZOLINE" 267 and listen — but do it soon, for we Yankees with our reclamation schemes and dredge boats and land seekers are fast despoiling Arcady. No longer will Octo' face a derisive world waiting a month for watermelons. He will have to put in a " gazzoline " and give his girl the headache. We left the Good Child at La Rose where she turned off on her way to New Orleans for that cargo of ice, and promptly got another lift on a very new boat, the America, owned by a proud young Captain, Andreas Tujague. A potato boat this time, and running down lower La Fourche to the potato country — just where we wanted to go and where we didn't want to pad- dle. We had become disgracefully recreant I'll admit, but canoeing in La Fourche isn't much. From the water level you can't see a thing, ex- cept buzzards and cows and geese and negro wash ladies with catfish lines attached. Captain Tujague was mightily proud of his wife and babies, his farm and his new potato boat. We dined pleasantly with him al fresco. 268 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH on the forward deck, while his negro hand held the wheel, and he informed us he was going " down below," and we would Hke it. Hen and I said we were willing and would sure like it, be- ing adaptable vagrants of fortune. So the new stern wheeler America chugged on until the star- light came and then on. Our impressions of Lower La Fourche were still of neat farm homes, small fields of okra, tomatoes, potatoes, corn, and melons. No negroes and no lordly overseers riding about as in the Teche country, but small comfortable home makers, the sort who are depicted in Evangeline : " Here you will find the Creole, And small Acadian planter, Who pours forth his heart and his wine Together in endless profusion — Beautiful the land with its prairies And forests of fruit trees; Under the feet a garden of flowers; And the bluest of heavens Bending above and resting its dome on The walls of the forest. They who dwell here have named it The Eden of Louisiana." CHAPTER XIII PADDLING TO THE GULF ISLANDS WE awoke in the hold of the good boat America. The young Captain was calling down: "Bon jour! Comme vous portez vous, M'sieurs? " Then there was, of course, some more about coffee. The America was lying along a willow bank over which from the farmstead were coming sunbonnetted women. We dressed hastily and thanked Captain Andreas for the hospitality of the potato hold which had saved us the trouble of making camp when the boat tied up last night. He had urged us to go to his house, but I rea- soned that the place was small and the family large and was right. 269 270 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH His father and mother, brothers, sisters, nephews, all were coming on board to greet the strangers and see what the America had brought back from the city. The men in their light, neatly washed trousers and broad sun hats were just from the field. They had been hoeing since daylight and had now come in for breakfast, after the custom of the country. It was by far the most oddly for- eign group and environment we had seen in the bayou country, or for that matter in Louisiana. The neat places, the placid cattle, knee deep in the water, the snug air of thrift and prosperity made us think of a French peasantry. We had coffee with these pleasant folk, few of whom could speak English, and then set off down the bayou, being anxious to make time before the sun grew hot. Five miles below we landed in the willows and cooked breakfast. The farm country here was fast giving out to willow and gum scrub, and the line of forest, which had fol- lowed all the way down La Fourche on each side three or four miles distant, now straggled o^ into mere ragged skeletons. PADDLING TO GULF ISLANDS 271 " The big salt marshes I " said Hen, " and the sea!" He pointed south where the sun seemed shining over hot, level flats of green. " And there's a tide here, too! " It was indeed setting up the bayou. We tasted it and felt as elated as Balboa must have done. " Hooray! " cried Hen. " Now oysters again — and shrimp ! And I'm going to hook a tarpon in Caminada Pass. And the old baron who's got the big place on the island and gave us the bid! Thank j^ou — we'll stay a month!" We paddled on, and the banks grew flatter, and the little fields with the Cajun women hoe- ing gave way to pastures of coarse grass with stubby palms and gnarly oak trees growing here and there among the water pools. We stopped at a palm hut back in one of these groves to fill our canvas water bottle, for we didn't know just how much fresh water we would find below, not having the remotest idea of the sort of land it was. The old Malay who offered us his rain barrel courteously could speak no English, so we went on. Six or eight miles of this desolate 272 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH country, with the great cypress dwindling out to a mere dying forest in the salt prairies, found us still working energetically despite the heat. We wanted to get somewhere out of it. At three o'clock we reached a dismal fishing hamlet at the junction of the canal that led to Barataria Bay. It was twelve miles from here to the open Gulf, and this was the last inhabit- able land except a few lonely camps. The idlers about the store advised us not to tackle the out- side route, and for once we took advice and de- cided to strike east through the marshes, cross the big bay, and reach Grand Isle. There would be no fresh water nor people nor little chance for a safe camp, so we best have a care tackling the weather in that pirogue. Alex Le Fort, the storekeeper and the head man of the village, had heard of us from voy- ageurs of the Little Lake country. They had just a trifle of suspicion in all their courteous- ness. Certainly, what were two strangers doing poking about all these months through the bayous with a camera and taking notes in books, We climb above the moss plumes to take an observation, DC PADDLING TO GULF ISLANDS 273 sleeping on the ground and enduring undoubted hardships when they might have traveled — if they had to travel — like men of sense? Pleas- ure? That was preposterous — there could be no pleasure in it! However, much as we could read between the lines, we were treated, as ever, with the utmost good will. On both sides of the bayou at Lee- ville were the idle shrimp and fish luggars lying along the rude walks that led to the houses. Back of this shimmered the illimitable salt marshes, with far away a gigantic funnel of black smoke where the grass was burning. We rested two hours at the store, and then made one of our usual late-in-the-day starts up the canal to reach Caminada Bay. And we had not gone very far into this eight miles of narrow waterway, lined on each side with the tall grass and mangroves before we found it was suffocat- ingly hot. But we dug at it, watching the van- ishing point of the canal far ahead. Just what sort of camp we would find in the marshes be- yond we had no idea. And after some long 274 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH sweating work I reached back for the canvas water bottle and discovered we had at last done that utterly inexcusable trick — forgotten to fill it! Hen and I stopped paddling and looked at each other. "Fitchered!" said Hen. "We daren't run deeper into the marsh without water." " But it's some broiling miles back to Le Fort's," I retorted. We looked ahead. The end of the canal was tantalizingly near — ^not more than a mile, we figured. " Surely we'll find a camp somewhere." I got ashore and tried to stand on the " trembling prairie " to look ahead. Nothing in sight but the impassable marsh and a glimpse of blue salt water to the south. Leeville back on this shin- ing thread of canal was merely a smudge of darker color on the intolerable glitter of the west. I wiped the sweat from my eyes. A mosquito had sing-songed out of the marsh. I remem- bered we were in the dreaded lower La Fourche PADDLING TO GULF ISLANDS 275 marshes, from which, when the wind is right, the scourge rises to invade all the south coast islands. " Hen, if we try to paddle back, the mos- quitoes will be on us soon as the sun sets — and something bad. I'm pretty thirsty, but let's take a chance. When we get to the end of the canal we ought to find someone — a luggar or a camp." But there was no sail in sight — nor a shack in all the miles we could see in every direction. "Well, dig in," growled Hen; " at the worst we can make a dry camp, go without eating, and keep going — only when we get into Caminada Bay we'll be in big salt water without an idea of what direction to steer. But take a chance — come on ! " So we paddled on more weary miles, with now and then a mullet leaping into the pirogue, and the shadowy forms of the giant gars moving be- fore us in the clear depth. Soon we saw the water with no shore beyond, and working stead- ily on, we reached it just at sunset. And by great luck there was firm land there — a long spit 276 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH of white shell beach, hardly twelve feet wide, it is true, but campable. And as we anxiously paddled along this, we saw a pirogue drawn up, and then a man — and then a palm shack set back in a forlorn clump of mangroves! Never did we greet a chap heartier than this poor crippled hunter and fisher, who, with his wife and four children, w^as making a miserable living in this utter solitude. And never did we get a kindlier welcome. He had absolutely nothing — not even a boat, save his pirogue, and his arm and hand were swollen enormously from the sting of a ray. He had met this misfortune while drawing seine with a Grand Isle company, and thereafter had to quit the work. All spring his hand had been useless, and his little boys had helped him with the hand lines catching the fish with which they subsisted. But he offered his coffee hospitably, and though water M^as scarce in his rain barrels, he filled our bottle. He pressed us to eat in his shack, but we put up the tent on the shell bank, bought two flounders of him for half a dollar — at which he protested that PADDLING TO GULF ISLANDS 277 we were cheating ourselves — and cooked our own supper. Meantime the sun had gone down in the yel- low marsh and the mosquitoes arose in clouds. We had to abandon supper half-eaten and crawl under our bar. We had been troubled little with them so far, despite predictions, and this vicious assault was a bad taste. In five minutes the roar about the tent was like a high-keyed machine, and it kept on into the dark for an hour. If we lit a candle the sound grew enor- mously, for many huge black beetles charged into the tent and clung to the bar, diving now and then crazily against the wall. But we slept well. Leon, the fisher, tapped on the tent pole at dawn to ask us in for early coffee. And when we were out, another man was there — a silent Creole, Andreas Moutin, who had a sailing skiff. He had volunteered to carry us down Caminada Bay to La Cheniere, hearing from Leon that we were trying to reach the coast. And a good tiling, too, for a southwest breeze 278 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH was kicking Caminada Bay to a smother of whitecaps. We couldn't have set the Bantayan into it for a mile. Hen protested a bit, as pride was beginning to hurt him at being carried along so much. But canoeing was impossible that day, so at nine we set off with the smiling Andreas in his cat-rigged skiff. We skirted long, marshy points and cut across deep bays, the skiff holding up well in the choppy sea. It was noon when we reached the lower end of La Cheniere Cami- nada — that lonely and forsaken island of the dead. Not even yet, after twenty years, have the south coast folk ventured back to it — the memory of the hurricane which hurled its homes and ships and very soil along with a thousand people into the raging Gulf is still on their souls. La Cheniere, in the old days, was the chief and liveliest settlement of the south coast — gay and lawless and unheeding. To-day there are but four inhabited houses scattered about among the storm-twisted oaks and mangroves, and its once fine beach is a ghastly reminder — riven and PADDLING TO GULF ISLANDS 279 torn and jagged, the sea here and there running up among the trees, washing the sand from their roots, which shine dead and spectral in the sun- light. Back of the houses is the marsh with its pools unstirred by anything but sea birds, though now and then you see in these pools the scat- tered bricks and foundations of a house. The stark, unpainted church of La Cheniere stands in the wrecked burying ground, unused, its floor bellied up, its foundations sunken, just as the Gulf storm left it. I do not know of such a scene of melancholy ruin anywhere as is La Cheniere Caminada. We did not go up far in the depressing island. Skipper Andreas landed us on the lower point and lifted a hand to show the way to Grand Isle. It was a dim blue smudge of trees far to the east. The nearer end of it was a mere spit of shining sand and over this was the Gulf of Mexico. Once far in Caminada Pass we saw the gleam of a breaker. That was what we wanted — the sea! Andreas stayed with us for breakfast — or 280 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH rather we with him, for it was Andreas who made the jambelat/a of oysters, ham, rice, and crabs which Hen speared around in the shallows. I made the biscuit. There wasn't much conver- sation but many smiles and gesticulations. An- dreas didn't know a word of English. But that was a famous breakfast. Onl}^ I must tell you what Hen relates with gusto — how I bragged so inordinately of my biscuit and Andreas, with many gestures, assisted at the apotheosis of the biscuit — but didn't eat any — and then, how, when we reached Grand Isle later and men- tioned our kind host, Andreas, we discovered that he was once the most famous baker of all the region round about! But I draw the curtain. It is bad taste to tell a joke on one's self. So a hot Sunday noon, after a swim in the salt water, we paddled leisurely across the roadstead of ancient Caminada to Grand Isle. The long sand reef ahead protected us from the rough- ness, so the Bantayan had no fear. Once in a while a little sea jogged up over her rubber cloth PADDLING TO GULF ISLANDS 281 covering, but after the Atchafalaya lakes this was nothing. We saw a luggar lying a mile below and headed for it. Under the shade of its gunwale we talked with the lazy crew. They had been hauling seine and of course we had to drink cof- fee with them. We had got so used to drinking coffee with every man we met under all circum- stances, that now we could squat in the shade of a sailcloth or mangrove bush, stir in the canned milk, and gesticulate in the coast patois with any of them. Hen told the Filipino-Creole crew that he was going to hook a tarpon. At once there was an excited protest. They declared we had better let the tarpon alone. No one ever thought of catching tarpon. They were no good, and they were dangerous. They related wild tales of malevolent tarpon jumping up in the air and coming down on unprotected boats just for devilment. If once you made a tarpon mad he would lie awake nights thinking of some way to " do " you. 282 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH No — no, the fishers protested — we must not bother the tarpon ! Anyhow, what earthly sport was it to catch a fish? Nothing but hard, wet drudgery, and there was hardly a living in it. As to a good time, one had better go to the " ball " this evenin' if one wanted a good time. One brown-armed, eager fellow pointed — just paddle that way a mile or so and we would come to the terrapin factory, and then in the cheniere we would find Ludwig's store and back of that the " ball." He thought they would have good music, too, for the Hazel boat was in. "The Hazel boat!" Well, well— we had found an old friend of three months ago up in Barataria! Hen and I felt as though we were nearing home — though where was home for Hen and me? So we indulgently refrained from talking tarpon to men who manifestly saw nothing in it but imbecility. We did paddle on, and the crew waved us away with many protestations of friendship, sajdng they would surely see us at PADDLING TO GULF ISLANDS 283 the ball. Above the low green oaks of Grand Isle we saw, now and then, a red roof. Out in the roadstead a huge old shed hung over the water; and to piles driven here and there were idle luggars, skiffs, and gasoline boats. We could hear the boom of the surf now over the oak groves which ran up the backbone of the nine-mile island. It was hardly more than half a mile wide, nor more than four feet above the sea. One could understand how the West Indian hurricanes, when they strike the Gulf coast, drive the waters far and deep over the helpless hamlets. We walked a quarter mile on a good shell road to reach Ludwig's store. It was in a yard behind thick fig trees and on its broad gallerie sat a comfortable, gray-haired woman, who greeted us with a soft "^ Bon soir, M'sieurs." Then we met her son, the leading merchant and factor of the island — portly, dignified, with the air and moustachios of a prosperous Cuban planter. We explained that we had just landed and wanted dinner. Certainly, M'sieurs, there 284 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH must be a place where dinner could be had! Certainly they would look, although there was no hotel now since the great storm of '93. Then along came a little, animated, dark-skinned man who was introduced to us as the constable, and acquainted with our desires. He was at once seized with pleasurable emotions — certainly, M'sieurs, dinner must be found! He went out on the gallerie and there was a consultation. Another wide-hatted and leisurely citizen joined the group; a barefooted fisherman from the fig tree shade added a word. More consultation, animation, gesticulation. It grew warm, with many pointings off and lookings back at us, shakings of head and protests. And never a word could hungry Hen and I make of it. Then the little constable approached with the air of a diplomat. M'sieu Ludwig had pro- posed that we be escorted to Madame Naccari's, where was served a most famous dinner in the summer when a few strangers visited the isle. But he — well, there was a question? PADDLING TO GULF ISLANDS 285 Had the Honorable Strangers coats? Coats? No, the honorable but hungry strangers had no coats. There was no room for coats when traveling in a pirogue. The Honorable Constable sighed. Ah, no coats! That was unfortunate — no coats. At Madame Naccari's famous sea food dinner, gentlemen wore coats. He was not sure — alas! It was a delicate subject — but would we mind if " Eat! " said Hen. " We don't care a d pardonne, M'sieu — we don't care where we eat or how or what — only eat. We're too tired to set up camp." Exactly. They all sympathized. But, ah — no coats! Then a brilliant idea. He would take us to Doctor Seay's. He was un Americaine; he would understand. He would welcome strangers from the North, coats or not. " Lead off," murmured Hen. " As I said, we don't care a " We went out, following the little constable, 286 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH who was now all smiles and fervent explana- tions. Welcome to Isle Grande! Welcome to the City! The strangers forever! Hooray! So we interpreted public feeling, now that the delicate issue was sidestepped. The crooked, narrow path leading from Ludwig's fig-shaded store to the Doctor's was girt on one side by gray-green sea marshes with tidal pools here and there in which the fiddler crabs climbed in and out away from our feet and the mullet leaped; and on the other by tumble-down fences choked and hidden by roses and oleanders and Spanish bayonet and palms. A rough, up-and-down, damp little path, but the only way one can travel east and west on Grand Isle unless one walks on the outer sea beach or goes through one's neighbor's gardens. Which is what ©ne mostly does. Grand Isle is a unique municipality in that respect — it is one hundred and fifty j^ears old, but in all that time it has never occurred to the natives to build a street. So there is no street — not one. Between the shaded gardens and neat, PADDLING TO GULF ISLANDS 287 miniature fields are narrow lanes, but so narrow that two of the high-wheeled carts, which are the only means of carriage, can hardly pass. And these only run from " beach to bay " across the isle! Lengthwise there are no streets whatever. As I said, when you shop on Grand Isle, you pass into your neighbor's lot, meander among the oaks and oleanders to another stile, through it and another until you come to the " sto'." Well, we meandered down the bay path, turned into a lane, into a lot and were proudly introduced to Dr. Seay. We were hospitably received, and the vivacious young daughter of the house fitted us out with oysters and maca- roni. Then we idled and discussed Grand Isle and our adventures until the heat of the day was broken, when the Doctor hitched up his cart and transported all our luggage to the outer beach. There, within a hundred yards of the tumbling surf, we put up the little silk tent among the gorgeous oleander bloom. Then we rested and watched the great round moon draw up from the sea — soft and benignantly shining 288 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH as were the airs blown over the water. Some- where back in the quiet gardens we heard the music of the Sunday evening ball. It was fine. We sat before the tent, listening to the surf on the yellow sands before us, watched the moon- path on the water, felt that soft breeze up from Yucatan six hundred miles due south, and voted old, tumble-down, carefree Grand Isle the place we had been looking for. ** I don't care if I never go home," murmured Hen — and went to sleep there on the spot all night, without taking the trouble to go to bed. What sleeps! And eats! Even if a chap had injured his social standing by paddling around the wilderness with no coat. CHAPTER XIV MORE BALLS, GIRLS, AND LEGENDS NEXT day we wandered about and had breakfast and much further information at the Doctor's. He was a New Orleans physician who had come down to the south coast islands years ago for his health, though the is- landers were too healthy to make a good living. However, the Doctor gardened, as did all the neighbors, and the amount of stuff that can be taken off these tiny two-acre farms of Grand Isle is amazing. In the early spring, cucum- bers; in the fall, cauliflower; and both the earli- est raised in the United States and shipped principally to Chicago markets for distribution. Between croppings, the islanders fish and trap, and nearly every truck-gardener has his " seine share " in one of the luggars. 289 290 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH In the evening I drove with Doctor Seay in his pony cart up and down the nine-mile curve of beach with the surf racing under the wheels. At either end the oak cheniere dwindled away to mere sandy reaches with a few dead trees slant- ing northward as the storms had left them. At the east end of the island is Grande Terre Pass, and at the other Caminada, and from these out- lets the tides rush fiercely, draining all the vast inland of swamps and lakes reaching from the river to the Gulf. This and Grand Terre Island are still romantically entwined with the feats of Jean La Fitte, whose pirate ships took refuge here from raids on the Caribbean; and where^ later, the slave ships fled when the British and Yankee sloops-of-war tried to break up the traffic. Here, as in all treasure-haunted Bara- taria, the tales still linger of La Fitte's hidden gold and of the days when cargoes of African savages were thrown to the sharks in the back bayous rather than have them captured by the authorities. The ancient landing place, the foundations of BALLS, GIRLS, AND LEGENDS 291 the house, and the old round tower or cistern of bricks at Rigaud's landing on the bay shore are given a date of 1780 in local legend, which is years before Pierre and Jean La Fitte, the gen- tleman adventurers, fled from France to lend their dubious fortunes to the thrifty Creole smuggler-traders of New Orleans, by their ex- ploits in the Spanish Main. Hen and I grew highly interested. It is true that to-day but few of the old pirate remains are here. The fort on Grand Terre, where Jean long defied the puny Republic of Madison's day to take him, and from which he, at length, led a thousand buccaneers to the defense of New Or- leans on Andrew Jackson's promise of amnesty, has long since been engulfed by the waves. But there are a few old families about whom legends cluster — the Rigauds and Chigazolas — as being descended from the adventurers of La Fitte, though now these are the usual kindly, courteous islanders we met everywhere. Hen and I went to the west end of the island in quest of this ancient stock and came upon our buccaneers 292 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH peacefully sorting cucumbers under the oak shade instead of slitting windpipes or relating hairbreadth 'scapes. We sat down to listen to the soft Creole patois. And in no time shy boys were bringing gifts — garden stuff and berries, and were saying that they had heard of us! The schoolteacher had told them about two Yankees she had seen almost four months ago starting from Barataria with a pirogue and a silk tent, headed for Grand Island — and where had we been all this time? That was flattering. To have these strangers interested in our wanderings. We were quite celebrated at once, and began relating Homeric tales — and inquiring about the fishing. Not that I cared a rap about fishing. Hen went off the next morning vowing he would have, at last, some real use for all that silver- tipped and jointed plunder of his, but I idled about the oak grove gardens and the sto's and the galleries. We had had a splendid dip in the surf before breakfast, much to the astonish- ment of the islanders, who never went in the BALLS, GIRLS, AND LEGENDS 293 sea until July unless they fell in. But the bath- ing was great. Some unfortunate day Grand Isle will be discovered and muddled over with hotels and tourists, and its warm, gentle surf all cluttered up with summer girls. May Hen not be there to see. Or I either ! The charm of that dolce far niente is still with me. From the Doctor's daughter and her friends who gathered each evening on her gallerie we learned a bit of Grand Isle's curious social con- dition. It apparently is one place in the South where the color line is not drawn sharply. There were not a great many families of pure white blood, and the " mixed " people were far wealthier and more influential. There are four " sets," as they had it. The whites, the " light mixed," " dark mixed," and " just nigger," though there are few blacks. Now, though all get on in the days' work with the most amicable neighborliness, when it comes to " pawties " and " balls " they had to have a care. The white girls, being very few, had no real ball ; but their brothers, with more license, could go to the 294 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH " light mixed '* or '' cafi au lait " ball. But none of the light mixed people would attend a " dark mixed " or " cafi noir '' festivity, and of course the "just nigger" was excluded from all of them. The perpetual amiable gossip of the island was the intermarryings of the various layers. The light-mixed people, being the richer and the real land-owning class, had a school of their own, because they would not send the children to the larger school where the " cafe noirs " could go also, and were debarred from the real white class, who attempted to have a school also privately maintained. As there were not four hundred people in the entire community, the " schools " were not flourishing institutions ; but the funny thing of it was, with this pretense of class exclusiveness, the entire neighborly amica- bility that enwrapped the whole island. They had no jail. They had no church. I asked the official what was done when there was trouble. He related an exciting story. " Wan time der was a Manilaman named BALLS, GIRLS, AND LEGENDS 295 Jose. Wan time dis Jose he coom here and feesh, and he drink wine. Eheu! Dat red wine he drink! I put dat Jose on a feesh boat wan time when he drink too much red wine, and he went away — I dun-no." The higher Hfe had an even more agitating legend. Once there was a church. It seemed that a priest came to the island and got every- one to help build the church. Everyone did, and jvhen the church was up the happy islanders dis- covered how the uplift had brought the serpent into Eden. Who was to worship in the church? White, " light mixed," " dark mixed," or "just nigger " ? It was the happy isle's one legend of general contention. They wrangled and raged and no one could make head or tail of the controversy, until finally some unknown Solomon settled the matter by burning the church down one night. Again peace reigned, and never since has Grand Isle bothered its head about religion. Wealth, too, seemed to lose its distinction here. Everyone on the island worked — easily. 296 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH independently, buoyantly, and made a living. The richest man on the island, except John Liid- wig, the terrapin king, was one who owned ten beach shore lots. But everyone worked, either at the " cues " or the fishing or in the " sto's." Grand Isle will make a fine study for some econ- omist, bad luck to him, Ludwig's terrapin farm was a collection of sheds out on the bay shore marshes, and in it were six thousand small diamond backed turtles. The terrapin king bought every terrapin that the hunters brought to him, held them in his shed and shipped them North by boat and rail whenever an order came. The business made him wealthy, even as the outside world rates wealth. Terrapin occasionally bring him forty dollars a dozen and he pays about a dollar apiece. Ludwig — Creole, for all his German name — was an intelligent and courteous man. He had outside correspondents in business, and had been to New York and Philadelphia. To his store, the principal one on the island, came most of the inhabitants for advice, and when the BALLS, GIRLS, AND LEGENDS 297 fishing was bad or the crop poor, the general patrone carried them through the season on his books. And he lost little. People were honest, he told me. At Ludwig's store was the only bar. But it had none of the character of a saloon. No loafers were about it; no barkeeper either. If one wanted a drink the proprietor or one of the boys in the store passed into the annex, served you, and came out. Or, if busy, they told you to help yourself and pay out in the store. More than likely half-a-dozen handsome children were playing " keep house " or something of the kind in the barroom, and no man would be in it all da}'^ long. There were four more stores on the island, each set back in its own shady grove and hedged about with magnolia, oleander, and roses. If one went from Ludwig's to Adams's or Nac- cari's stores one went over stiles and through gates on a veritable lover's path, winding in and out with no pretense of street or sidewalk. The Arcadian simplicity of Grand Isle was refresh- 298 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH ing, as fine as the hospitality of its people. Hen and I bathed of mornings in that surf, idled, smoked, wandered, sat on the galleries, talked boats and fishing, storms and cucumbers, all of a week ere we knew it had gone. Once we mentioned that we really ought to be going and there was a kindly murmur of dissent. Go? Why we had only just come! Besides, Satur- day the Hazel boat came back and there would be a ball Saturday night, Sunday, and Sunday night. Sunday all the bayou boat men would be in, and the seine crews and the island would give itself to gayety. So we agreed to stay, not having any particular place to go. We had enjoyed the beach camp. For ten days the southwest breeze blew off the Gulf, night and day, and our little silk tent bellied out like a paper bag. We slept without bars, which was remarkable at this season of the year, for the sea wind kept every mosquito away. It is the occasional west winds that bring the scourge off La Fourche marshes — I have visited Grand Isle since when they were intolerable for a time. BALLS. GIRLS, AND LEGENDS 299 We heard a good deal about the two balls on Saturday night. Our fair young friends who radiated about the Doctor's were, of course, going to their own ball; but some of the young chaps privately informed us that there would be cake and sherbet and the prettiest girls at the other. Hen and I determined we would see both. And when we went we were totally unable to see any difference in the quiet, fun-loving folk at the two pavilions. There were not a dozen young people at the white ball; but we did the honors and then slipped away through the moon- light to the other, stopping at the sto' for a measure of wine and a word with the elders grouped about on the gallerie benches. There was always laughter, gentle badinage in the soft patois, and room for a friend. A j^oung fellow was telling of the " fit " that Unc' Henri had in the *' cue " patch that " evening." A pretty young girl had come out of the house to hold ammonia to his nose ; and thereat the young men workers begged their employer for half an hour off that they might each have a fit and be min- 300 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH istered to by the pretty daughter. Unc' Henri, a white-bearded patriarch, now quite recovered, sat among them and enjoyed the banter much as anyone. The ballroom was a long pavilion open on every side and with oleanders and roses hanging in over the gallerie railing, rough, unpainted, lit by side lamps hung here and there. At one end was the " music," an accordeon and a fiddle, and around the floor waltzed dreamily the youth and beauty of Grand Isle. We were heartily welcomed. We could sit in the " grape arbeh," or we could dance. And there would be sherbet and cake and also gumbo. Did we think it was too warm a night for gumbo ? Never. It was a fine night for anything. Even Hen warmed up as he saw the little girls in white with the orange blossoms in their hair waltzing about the old floor. All of the family giving the ball were busied. M'sieu was deftly shaving one guest in an ante-room, Madame was stirring the gumbo, the children BALLS, GIRLS, AND LEGENDS 301 were in ecstasies over the sherbet — it was sho' a grand ball. But my friend, Hen, was in trouble again. He wanted to dance! And he had encountered the constable, who was the stickler for proprie- ties on Grand Island. And Hen had no coat. And holes in his flannel shirt. The constable explained that he had just come from our camp. *' I told mail wife I sho' was goin' to pass by dat camp and escort dem gentlemen to dat ball. Eheu! And dem gentlemen didn't wait fo' me ! " Horrible ! We had made another social break by not waiting to be escorted by the constable. But Hen wanted to dance. He told the con- stable very touchingly that he had no coat. They nearly wept together. And the next I knew Hen was doing twosteps around that floor in a blue coat with brass buttons which he had bor- rowed from a lonely, callow militiaman who had come down from New Orleans on the Hazel boat, and, at a safe distance, had been bedazzling the eyes of the island girls with all this glory. On what pretext Hen got his coat I do not 302 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH know, but my fellow voyager was now romping around the hall with a very short girl, grimacing over her shoulder. Hen did not like girls — ^not a bit! The anxious militiaman stood about, dangling his hat and wondering. When the dance was done, Hen got another girl. Then another, and another. He was having the time of his bright young life, hair or no hair — and all the time the despoiled soldier stood about trying to get up courage to ask Hen for the return of his coat. The girls fell to laughing as we sat out on the gallerie. Hen had made a great hit. We stayed at the ball until midnight. It was very fine out on the gallerie, the flower-decked girls, the moonlight, the odors of the south and the boom of the surf on the island sands, and the droning music. In the shadows some fellow played a guitar, and the entire assemblage was low-voiced and gentle, with no boisterousness nor drinking nor a jarring note. We liked the ball immensely, and went away to camp satis- fied. BALLS, GIRLS, AND LEGENDS 303 Sunday morning we idled at the sto' watching the cocks fight in the yards and the mule carts creak in from the bay shore whpre a gas boat was being unloaded. The anchorage was so shallow that the boats could not come close in, so at low tide the mule carts were driven out to the lighters and the freight loaded in them. Another line of half a dozen carts was ambling out of the narrow, shady lanes loaded with cu- cumbers to go, the next day, to New Orleans and the North. The Sunday idlers on the gallerie watched the work with languid comments. I asked them why a wharf had never been built to do away with this laborious lightering, and they seemed astonished. We found that Grand Islanders had a pleasing faith that some day a railroad would fmd its way down the leagues of swamp forest and salt marsh to the coast, a great hotel would be built, and their fortunes would be made. Not a man would sell an arpent of land. They could sit on the gallerie and dream of their long, beau- tiful beach cleaned and gay with winter visitors, 304 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH the oak groves and oleander lined lanes set with modern cottages, and the thrifty folk amassing money from their ancient holdings. This pleas- ant mood of the lotus eaters we found among them all. They were absolutely the happiest people it has ever been my fortune to see. Hen and I took a long walk down the island Sunday, and when we came back to camp, three dark-eyed girls — with the inevitable flowers in their hair and dressed in white from tip to toe — were there to invite us to another ball. Said Madamoiselle Alirte: " They'll be mo' ice cream to-day, and I was just passin' to tell you-all." But we had accepted an invitation to our Doc- tor's to drive and to play checkers, which I did — on his operating table, of which he said: " Been sixty-four operations on this and only one death." But he beat me four games straight. Then we took our usual spin up the white beach, and the Doctor told of many adventures while going on calls to far distant islands and cheri' teres, the seas rising over the sands as he drove, and of storm-lashed boat-men waiting to fetch o Oh 'Of) 5 BALLS, GIRLS, AND LEGENDS 305 him across to attend injured men of the camps. But he liked it all — the freedom and the bigness. He told us the celebrated story of the light- house keeper at Grand Tcrre who went to the city and married a widow and six children and brought her down to the coast. The widow and her children stayed two weeks pleasantly enough and then went back to the city, informing the lovelorn husband that they guessed they had had a pretty good time and it was best to go — it was the first time in twelve years the widow had been able to take the family on a vacation, and she thanked him very much ! CHAPTER XV ON THE baron's ISLAND WE did not attend the ball that night. Well enough, for the next morning Miss Alirte " passed " our way to tell us that all the guests had gone home at nine o'clock in disgust. The music was " broke." The accordeon man couldn't fix it either, he de- clared. But all the island girls had a deep sus- picion that the accordeon man broke his music purposely, being tired from playing all night and day, and besides he had collected all the boys' money, anyhow. The music that " broke " so inauspiciously furnished gossip for a week. We concluded to get away from Grand Isle that day, or else it would hold us forever. Be- sides, up the Bay, somewhere was Allesjandro and his mysterious island of the Baron. We must be off. So Hen and I made a round of ceremony to all the sto's and the cucumber pickr ers saying good-by and sailed away on the stern- 306 ON THE BARON'S ISLAND 307 wheel gas boat, F, S^ J., Captain Fabre Adam commanding. It was a stormy morning that dawned on' Barataria Bay, and when we had made the run to a lonely shrimp platform at Grand Bank and then turned northward, the wind and rain buried us again in darkness. So we saw Uttle of Grand Terre and its lighthouse on the rampart of the ruined fort — that uninhabited isle, once the refuge of La Fitte, and now lashed by wind and eaten by waves to a crumbling waste. Then out of the storm would break the brilliant sun and we would see the far, drenched marshes shining and the fierce, broken seas in the passes; and then again a whirl of rain and wind would strike us. It is a coast of smiles and tears, perilous whims and tragic moods, and went fitly with tales of buccaneering. Fabre Adam landed our outfit on the plat- form at Manila Village with some difficulty in the pounding seas. Then the F. 8^ J. veered off in the storm, leaving us gazing about from the shed at a curious colony. The wooden 308 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH shrimp platform was a full acre in extent and around its margins were built the houses of the fishers. But under the entire village the waves rolled and crashed through the salt marsh. Not a bit of land was above the high tides. And while we stood looking somewhat blankly about, a man came hurrying down through the rain with his hand out to the strangers. He wel- comed us up to the store which supplied the seine crews of the shrimp company. And a cap- ital good fellow he proved to be in the three days that gale lasted, and Hen and I were his en- forced guests at Manila. Charley Grand jean, one time of the South African Mounted Infantry, globe-trotter, sol- dier of misfortune, and raconteur, was also a great cook. We were rousingly welcomed by the little group of men marooned at Manila. It was between seasons when there was nothing to do but mend seines, paint boats, and take care of camp. There were Charley, the cook, and " Scotty," one time Grand jean's fellow soldier in the Boer War; " Portyghee Joe," the store ON THE BARON'S ISLAND 309 man; Charley Stein, a one-time German sailor, now looking after the oyster-beds — along with a Malay, Italian, and Chinese half-breed or two — all eager to learn something from outside and eager to outdo each other in greeting the strangers. Also there were Grand jean's pets — " Nig," " Happy," and " Rabbit," the cats; and six grotesque young pelicans waddling about the platform. Also a mongrel dog or two. Two or three times a week some boat stopped at the plat- form, otherwise the stilt-dwellers were quite cut off from the earth. They fed us well and told us wondrous tales; of the sharks and stingrays and the alligator hunting; of the September storms when the seas had had them clinging by their teeth to the frail supports ; of the " big drunk fights " on the plat- forms after pay-days when the fishing was good, and it was every one for himself without law of man or God; of Grand jean's tramp across India after he left the English service and was trying to get home. They were a curious lot ; when you inquire delicately why this man or that is down 310 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH in the shrimp camp, he may shrug his shoulders enigmatically. There are a great many reasons. Life was a gamble there, and as long as the world goes around men will love to gamble. Grand jean said he was discontented anywhere else. It was big and still and free and a man could be a man among men. Sometimes the seine crews made big money — and the next month, after a visit to the city and wine and woman and song, they were broke and in debt to the store and had to stay to work it out. And down river to the Barataria swamps — " the Free State " — come many men who leave their country for their country's good; and from the ships of the nations at New Or- leans' wharves come deserters of all the seas eager for the New World's freedom. Thursday, June third, the sou'easter swung west and the next day was clean and clear to the far line of the Gulf, and north to the illim- itable marshes. We got away from our friends, paddling again, and it was good to feel the old Bantayan dig forward under our hands. We ON THE BARON'S ISLAND 311 had got tolerable directions as to reaching Cut- ler's Island, but in an hour the grassy-banked bayou we were to follow through the marsh spread into immense channels threading this way and that, a mile or so wide at every point, with a smart breeze kicking up the whitecaps. And from the water level we could not see the cheniere that would mark Cutler's when we got out of the marsh. But we took what we thought was Bayou St. Denis and stuck at it all the afternoon. And finally, rounding one of the marsh points that thrust out of the vast, impassable " trem- bling prairies," we saw a far oak grove over a beach of shining shell;?. " The Baron's ! " yelled Hen. " And I see the yacht riding off the cove. And the old Filipino — maybe he won't be surprised!" We crawled on slowly along the marsh shore. It was almost sundown, with the fiery globe hanging squarely over the bit of land and all the wet prairies round about turned to amazing colors of purple and yellow, when we drew up 312 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH to the sloop. A little man was bending over some task on the after deck and he did not see us until we yelled: "Hello, Allesjandro!" Then he turned: "^ Que tal, Senores!" He rushed to give us a hand. His delight couldn't have been greater if we had been long- lost brothers, and his pride, when he had landed us on the shell beach and escorted us up to the baronial hall, was touching. He tapped us on the back, he bowed and gestured and explained in Spanish and French and Malay, I reckon — and all the other polyglot tongues of the south coast. Remember us? Ah, could the distinguished Senores doubt him? Almost four months they had waited for the distinguished Sefiores who could make such amazing flapjacks as he, Alles- jandro, had witnessed at Clark's cheniere! And a tent made of silk that would fold up no bigger than one's hat; and a picture machine, a won- drous fishing rod all pretty with silver gim- cracks; and duffles and piffles and whatnot — ON THE BARON'S ISLAND 313 who would ever forget the distinguished Seiiores? The Baron stood waving his long-stemmed meerschaum with dignity while his major-domo spluttered the introduction. Welcome — thrice, fifty times, welcome ! Seats for the Sefiores on the gallerie and cof- fee pronto! You bet. The Sefiores never re- fused anything. They met also the Baron's young wife and a pretty little guest down from N'Awlyins. We were seated, and the Baron explained that he had heard of us, most certainly. We were now back within ten miles of Clark's Cheniere, w^here we bought the Bantayan last April and started back-tracking from Florida and the Fountain of Youth. And did we have a good time? Great! And did we like the people? Splendidly! And the grub? Wow! And the mosquitoes? By Jimmy — no! No one could love a mosquito! We were told we had better go down the beach to the palm hut and rig our bars before the mos- 314 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH quitoes came. Cutler's was bad for them in June time. So we went down the white, clean beach under the oaks and palm scrub and hung our bar over the bunk. Then we went back to the tiny home among the oak trees and china berries and had dinner on the screened gallerie. After sundown the mosquitoes came off the marshes back of us, a voracious horde. We dined with laughter and merriment, the Baron, portly and beaming, at the head of the table, his wife across; little Miss Lincoln and Allesjandro on one side, and Hen and I on the other. The Baron told of his youth at a military school at Buda-Pesth; and how, later, he wan- dered about Europe, and when the Civil War came on in America, crossed the ocean as a soldier of fortune and entered the Confederate service in a Florida regiment with the rank of captain. When the cause was lost he came to New Or- leans and made a fortune in some capacity with the old Louisiana lottery company. And then he lost most of it and retired, to buy Cutler's ON THE BARON'S ISLAND 315 Island down on the lonely coast and come here to live with his American wife, his sloop Liberty , and his man Friday, Allesjandro. No one came to see him any more except wan- derers off the face of the waters like ourselves, and his Cajun-Filipino neighbors from far camps in the chenieres scattered over the great marshes. He was greatly pleased to put us up. Allesjandro must help us store our stuff and we could stay a month — a year — always — quien sahe? It was pleasant. Here was the rich garden back of the house where Allesjandro raised corn, potatoes, okra, tomatoes, melons, everything. There in front of the beach lay his famous oys- ters. All about the luscious crabs crawled to be taken. Shrimp and fish were at one's hand ; and in the winter ducks and a deer to be fetched out of the swamp beyond Bayou Dupont. God was good — did we ever see such sunshine, such fine air off the blue Gulf as he had here? We dined excellently on crabs, rice, lettuce, and hegung. 316 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH Begung was raw trout eggs in vinegar and spices — a dish that Allesjandro brought from his Asiatic home. And good. When it was over we talked and smoked and Hstened to the roar of the mosquitoes outside the screen gallerie. It was terrific. The night was still and warm, just the night for mosquitoes and the screens were gray with them. And when one got in you would hear a slap and a word and a scratch. We did not leave the house until ten, for after that the mosquitoes cease their ragings largely. Then we walked down the moonlit shell beach and turned in under our own bars to listen to the rustle of the chameleons, and maybe a snake or two, in the dry walls of our palm hut. We awoke to have a swim in the waters of the cove. A most glorious morning, and the appetite we took up to the Baron's table pleased everyone. Fried oysters and rolls and coffee. Then another day of sheer idleness, I'll confess. No, we inspected the neat garden back of the oaks, tonged some oysters for a gumbo, listened to Esther Lincoln's soft- voiced drawl as she told ON THE BARON'S ISLAND 317 of her N'Awlyins school, and the Baron's mis- chievous reminiscence. Sitting on his gallerie, the great bowl of his pipe resting on his fat knee, he would " jolly " all of us. Every hour we liked the Baron better. And never did I see such loyalty as his cheery wife and Allesjandro gave to the old man. The rude little home radi- ated good will and good humor to all the infinite loneliness of its sweep of sea and sky and marsh. That night after supper we gathered in the living room under its low, smoky rafters hung with garlands of bright peppers, garlic, dried fish, skins of mink, and hunting clothes. The Baron's chinmey was a big one, thatched with mud over the huge, open fire-place. Wasps had built their nests in everj^ corner and toe-hold, while the walls were a gay disorder of litho- graphs and calendars. Worst of all was that this room was un- screened; and best of all was the opera. For, honest, we had opera! That was the occasion of the party. The old Baron retired early under his mosquito bar to the bed in one corner of the 318 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH room, merely keeping his huge pipe bowl out from under the net, where it waved to and fro majestically with the music. Allesjandro busied himself with making a fire to smoke out the mos- quitoes, and the Mrs. Baron wound up the phonograph. Then Esther passed around the citronelle bottle, from which everyone liberally sprinkled themselves to ward the mosquitoes still further away, and the festivity was on. We had all the good old stuff; Verdi, and the " Pilgrims' Chorus," and the " Spring Song," and " Tarentelle," and then we saw the Baron's pipe sticking from under the bar keeping time — while puff — puff — puff — the smoke came out the top of the bed — to his favorite: "La Donne e Mobile," from " Rigoletto." He knew all the music as he could discuss world politics or the frying of soft shell crabs when he wished. Allesjandro's fire soon had everybody chok- ing and sputtering, but still the mosquitoes fought for admittance. So the party went on with jibes and laughter, the phonograph growl- ing away on its classics, and the smell of the ON THE BARON'S ISLAND 319 citronelle rising to Heaven. It was quite eleven when the last air had been played and the last pipe smoked by the Baron. He stuck his wise old shaggy head from under the bar to bid us '' Bon soir," Then we went out in the full moonlight that lay like a bar of yellow over Barataria Bay to our palm hut down the beach, still humming a bit of Verdi. Says Hen: *'Do you know, if it wasn't for the mosquitoes this would be romantic. Moon- light, music, girl, and all that sort of thing! " CHAPTER XVI WITH THE MORO EXILES THE next morning we made a startling discovery. I had had an extra pair of khaki " pants." Hen had often protested against the rashness of me owning two pairs of pants, to say nothing of the additional burden to our canoe outfit. But I pointed out that a man cannot properly pursue the adventurous life on one pair of trousers, so I stuck to them. And now they were gone. What was worse, all our money was in them! We racked our brains. " I think you left them at Manila in Portyghee Joe's bunk," said Hen. That seemed probable. 'No one had seen the luckless pants for a week ; and there was no pos- sible use for money. We related this harrow- ing tale at the Baron's and at once they were 320 TIr' simkc'ii shoics and cypress spikt's of (irand I.akc WITH THE MORO EXILES 321 all sympathy. It was decided to sail at once for Manila and rescue the trousers, and the Baron- ess and her guest and Hen and I got away on Allesjandro's yacht, with the Baron calling adieux in Latin and waving his pipe from the gallerie. We had a famous sail of it, leaving with noth- ing but early coffee, intending to get breakfast on board. But I so bragged about the break- fast that Charley Grand jean would cook for us, his amazing biscuits and shrimp fricassee, that Esther joined me in declining to eat with the others on board. We scorned simple rice and bread, but when we reached Manila, with the wind dropping fitfully all the way, it was so late that the cook had gone off fishing and no one was there except Portyghee Joe to greet us and fervently restore the pants and money. We had great felicitation and, of course, coffee, but the rest of our party stood about in glee listen- ing to Esther and me hint it was about dinner time. And it was — that was the awful thing about 322 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH it, and we had been up since five o'clock with nothing to eat. We got away for home at two o'clock with the cook still missing and our sense of delicacy too great to demand dinner. Inno- cent Portyghee Joe didn't dream of it, but on the way back Allesjandro and Hen and the Baroness shouted with laughter. " Next time you will scorn our cooking, will you?" chortled they — "and tell us about the famous chef at Manila ! '* So we drifted back to Cutler's with madden- ing slowness. Allesjandro related how he came to Barataria twenty-five years ago, after desert- ing from a Spanish merchantman on the New Orleans levees. In those days it was the custom of the Spaniards to seize natives of the Philip- pines in the outlying islands, impress them into forced service in the merchant marine, and treat them so cruelly that they would desert in any port of the world. Allesjandro and two other " Manilamen " escaped across the Mississippi, seized a skifF, and threaded the bayous down from New Orleans seeking camps of their fel- WITH THE MORO EXILES 323 low countrymen which they had learned were here. They suffered greatly from hunger and thirst, but finally reached Bassa Bassa platform and were cared for. He fished and trapped for several years until he met the Baron and entered his service. The wind came later, a mighty pocketful that we didn't want, just as we managed to crawl into the cove at Cutler's. A black squall jumped into the west, bowled down, and put the sloop on her beam ends before we got her sails in. Then we managed to get ashore in the skiff, drenched and laughing and hungry, to find the Baron entertaining a guest from St. Joseph's Island — Old Mariano, grizzled and dark, who understood little English. But he smiled con- tinually, and when Allesjandro, over the hot rice, bawled : " Blow, San Anton — e ! " Old Mariano joined the fun . He paddled off at length, leaving with us an invitation to have breakfast Sunday morning at St. Joseph's. Then another night of wondrous moonlight, the bay a mirror showing the myriad stars, 324 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH while twenty miles to the south, the Grand Terre light flashed now and then so clear was the atmosphere. We had more opera and mos- quito dope and went to bed contentedly, with the flicker of the palm thatch as the lizards scam- pered through it in our drowsy ears. We started at six o'clock for St. Joseph's, the Baroness and I in one pirogue and Hen and Esther in the other with Allesjandro paddling. Such gayety was quite too much for the Baron's bones, but he waved us grandly ^' Bon voyage/' The four miles gave us all a taste for break- fast, and everyone helped prepare it. Mariano's camp was quite the most primitive place we had yet seen, a tiny shack of palms laced and tied with grass thongs to the pole supports. And in it nothing but the two bunks of the old Moros, a rude table, a box for their scanty groceries, and a clay furnace hollowed out of the floor at one end. But how clean it all was! The clay floor was hammered and swept, everything was in order, all the extra clothes were out on bushes about the hut, and even the path leading to the WITH THE MORO EXILES 325 thatch fence of the little garden was swept thriftily. The island was much like the other; in front a sweep of slow tide water reaching to the tree- less prairies, and behind the low ridge which made the garden and the house spot, the illimit- able marshes again stretched away. Nothing was in sight to break the brilliant salt swamp colors except a few far oak chenieres — nothing except sky and sea and the eternal silence. Old Mariano and his partner, Juan Sam- boanga, who, said Allesjandro, was so called from the town he hailed from in the Philippines, were Spanish deserters like most of the other Manilamen. They had been in the Barataria swamps for forty years, living simply by their seines and traps and gardens. Old Juan was one of the most striking figures — very tall and lithe, his long beard white as snow, his cheeks and brow smooth and brown as chocolate. His eyes twinkled under the bushy brows, and his great dignity made me think of an Arab chief — as you read of Arabs. 326 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH One could not ask for more graceful hospital- ity than these two lonely old men extended. They apologized for nothing. Their poverty was plain, but all was yours — accept it. They had a great gumbo brewing; crabs and shrimp and oysters along with okra, tomatoes, lemon, parsley, bay leaves, peppers, onions, lard, and garlic. When we had inspected the neat garden with the white shells carefully piled between the rows of young plants we came back to this feast. They offered us water in little calabashes, adorned with colored clay, and coffee in battered tin cups. Their bread was broken from a huge loaf baked in the clay oven which was outside the house and almost as large. And though the two old men were silent or laughed shyly with Allesjandro, who interpreted our compliments to them, never did a rarer spirit of fellowship shine forth than from their eyes. They were simply and proudly glad to have us as guests — that was all. Old Juan said that he was one hundred and ten years old, and, scanning him closer, one be- WITH THE MORO EXILES 327 lieved it. His fine brown skin was literally a fila- gree of intricate lines. But his eyes were clear as a girl's, and though Mariano did most of the work, Juan declared he felt young as his com- rade. A gay young comrade of eighty! We smoked and gossiped all morning with our hosts in the shade of the cheniere. When we addressed a question they would beam and turn to Allesjandro for a clearer interpretation and the little sailing master would gesticulate excitedly, both arms working. Then the two gentle old men would debate the matter and ex- plain. I wanted to learn more of their lives, for Juan had been a head-hunter in his days as a young Moro before the Spaniards captured him, but conversation via Allesjandro was diffi- cult. I couldn't catch all of Allesjandro's inter- pretations. But we bade them good-by and paddled back in the hot mid-day to sleep and loaf until supper time. The old Moros had made us a present of a dish of roe and fish and spices all pickled and bay leaf scented, and we presented this to the 328 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH Baron for the evening meal, and he accepted it >vith grand ceremony. I shall not forget that last night's beauty. There was a phenomenon at sunset that brought us all out on the tiny shell beach to exclaim and wonder. Some impalpable mist was in the air over all the sea and marshes and through this the level sun rays shot until it hung everywhere in filmy fringes of translucent golden web. Here and there a patch of blue sky showed dimly, and under it the limitless marsh was an emerald encircled by the mirrored waters. So still it was that a single wild duck winging into this magic light could be heard far away; and so fragile hung this curtain that when the red globe of the sun dropped into the waters, it van- ished like a dream, leaving the sky and marsh crystal clear again. Allesjandro said it must mean "weather." The Baron hobbled back to his gallerie. He waved his hand with a sort of pathos out to the silent plumes of the Spanish moss reflected from the live oaks in the water. WITH THE MORO EXILES 329 " Well, well — and I am old, and one of these days the island shall know me no more. Eh, my good friends ! Let us fill our pipes and think how very fine it is to be together." He was not poor — not he! Any more than Old Mariano and his friend at St. Joseph's I What if the Baron's castle had come to be a three-room hut of boards and palm leaves, browned and smoked with age and cheery fires, home tints and memories? It was with a princely sort of grace the old swordsman waved you to his table — you the guest, Yankee, Creole, Filipino deserter, beach comber of Grand Isle or Tambalier; to his rice and fish couhouillion, coffee, bread, and melons; to his bed down the beach in the guest house. What more could a man want? Here was the gleam of shells on his own beach, here his amaz- ing sky; his marsh, his palm and oak and gar- den, and all about the sea's riches came to his " sweet earth," as the natives call land higher than the salt tides. There, in winter, are the deer of the cheniere, the ducks of the lagoons. 330 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH the mink, otter, muskrats in the marshes for his man to trap; there were the passing shrimp and trade boats, friendly men, neighbors all, wher- ever they might wander. When Hen and I went to our beds he was repeating: "Let's fill our pipes, my friends. It is very good to be to- gether." We left Cutler's the next day, paddling up Bayou Dupont, a narrow, winding way through the salt marshes. They warned us against it. It led into uninhabited desolation all the way to Barataria. But it was shorter than by Little Lake, and besides desolation was what we wanted to see rather than more camps and plat- form villages. Our good friends waved us fare- well that sunrise from the shell beach. Alles- jandro shouted: "Blow, San Anton — e! Good winds f o' you ! " And now I hate to record the last word pf Cutler's Island. I would rather remember it as we were welcomed. Two years later I sailed from Grand Isle up through broad St. Denis, intending to stop and look the spot over. But WITH THE MORO EXILES 331 I didn't. As I saw it from our motorboat I didn't care to. It was the year after the great hurricane. No white sloop rode in the little cove. No palm-thatched guest house stood down the shell beach. The Baron's castle had van- ished from under the big live oaks. Those oaks themselves were twisted and shattered, seeming to stagger out of great gouges torn from the shell reef and leaning as if to flee from the ter- ror that had smote them. Nothing of all the quaint and pretty garden remained. The sea that rode up out of the southeast and for three days burst over all the coast had riven Cutler's to a mere tattered little wilderness about which the salt marshes enhanced the solitude. Curiously enough, Grand Isle, twenty miles farther out toward the Gulf, had escaped with nothing but an inundation and the loss of one life, although every boat save one in its anchor- age was adrift. Manila was badly battered, and the shrimp fishers, cutting the masts from their luggars, tied themselves in and drifted with the seas, some discovering, after the tornado. 332 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH that they were stranded in impenetrable marshes thirty miles from their wrecked camps. But next month back they all came, hopefully, buoy- antly, forgetful of the three hundred of their fellows who were lost in the Tambalier and Grand Caillou camps; or of La Cheniere Cami- nada in 1893 and of Isle Derniere in 1854, cele- brated in Lafcadio Hearn's story of " Chita." It is in the blood with these hardy, simple, fun-loving children of the South. They will tell you of the storms, of their lost fathers and brothers, with a shrug. '^ Tres bien? Who can ward off the will of God?" The Baron and his retinue escaped in their sloop, but the old man died in New Orleans, the following year. CHAPTER XVII THE " BANTAYAN " ENDS HER CRUISE HEN and I paddled the Bantayan on all that hot June day up Bayou Dupont. It widened out to still and nameless little lakes and then narrowed to the same man- grove-fringed channel. It led us into low scrubs of palms and willows, cane, oak, and bronze- plumed grasses all tangled with miles and miles of morning glories. We saw more fearless bird life in those two days in Bayou Dupont than we had in all the months before. Egrets and galli- nules, herons and cranes, snipe and plover on the mud flats, and we could paddle within thirty feet of them, so somnolent they seemed. And in the scrub were our old forest friends, the scar- let tanagers, cardinals, and mocking birds. Once we stirred a deer, which splashed easily off in SS3 334 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH the swamp, and twice we overtook a lazy 'gator crossing the bayou. But the prospect was depressing; we were in the lowest fringe of the great Barataria woods, where the last trees run out to salt water — a lonely, dying land of pale opal glows and si- lences. Far to the east now and then we caught the smoke plumes of the ocean liners ascending the Mississippi to New Orleans. Once we saw a white plantation house in the dim, blue line of woods that marked the margin of the great river. We tried to get near the higher country, but at its closest five miles of impassable salt marsh lay Detween. There was a channel somewhere, but we could not find it. At evening, when we were getting rather concerned as to our bearings, owing to the channels that led off either way to end in mere blind morasses, and more than one earnest debate was held as to the course, we came upon something that made us shout. We knew the right channel now! Ahead of us, drifting about a scrubby point, we saw the water hyacinths! " BANT AY AN " ENDS HER CRUISE 335 They were drifting with the ebb tide, and surely they must come out of Barataria woods, whither we knew Dupont must eventually lead. So we paddled on more hopefully, for the pros- pect of a night in the marsh was not pleasing. The mosquitoes would be fearful. More lilies came about the bends, more than we wished, for soon Hen was swearing at the course he had to pursue to avoid them. "But they come from sweet landf' I cried. ** So there's a way out! '* *' Fine. But suppose they fill this bayou up a bit? A battleship couldn't get through the lily jams we've seen up on Grand Biver." But we had better luck. We worked wearily from dawn to dark that day and never a glimpse of a human presence did we discover. And then, as we were paddling on along a thick, scrubby shore and a few mosquitoes were winging out of the brush at us, I looked in to see a palm-thatch above the grass. We landed at once. It was in use, but no one was about. This was the first real " sweet land " we had seen since Cutler's, 336 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH and some swamper had taken advantage of it. The owner had left his coffee pot half-filled on the edge of the clay furnace and his bars hung under the shack, so we knew he would return. We stuck up our tent alongside and appro- priated his kitchen utensils and firewood. Our hasty supper was almost done when I heard an exclamation, and looking out on the dusky stream saw a man staring at us from his pi- rogue. He was startled, but we hailed him. He came ashore nervously and we introduced our- selves. Ah, yes, the Yankees and the pirogue! Of course he knew! People in Barataria were still wondering where those two madmen had disap- peared last March when their silk tent was struck on Spanish Man's Point at Lake Sal- vador ! Le Nom de Dieu! Where had we been? Grand Isle? In that pirogue? Impossible! And La Fourche and Morgan City? Up the Atchafalaya ? Xo — no, my friends — that can't be! A pirogue could not cross all the " BANT AY AN " ENDS HER CRUISE 337 lakes? And how could we live in the Hood swamps he had heard about up the Mississippi? Le Nom de Dieu — and didn't the snakes and mosquitoes kill us? We had to sit about M'sieu Adam's campfire and fight mosquitoes an hour telling all this. He had never been half that far from home — no — no — surely not ! That was too far for an honest man! M'sieu Adam was hunting alligators. Two more of his friends were coming later and they would steal down the bayou in their pirogues, a flambeau on the prow of each, and when they saw a 'gator's eyes shining in the dark they would pot him with a shotgun loaded with buck- shot. " Not for me! " sang Hen. " Mosquitoes all night for a 'gator skin? And you'll sell it for six bits to the trade boats! " After we had retired and I was about asleep, M'sieu Adam stole to our tent and rustled the bar. He had thought of something. His friends would be coming up the bayou and they would 338 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH see this green-white tent shining in the moon- light, and sure as can be they would either be frightened and paddle back with all haste or they would shoot at it. So M'sieu Adam was going to set off to meet them and warn them not to disturb the visitors' rest by raking them with buckshot. We breakfasted with the trio the next morn- ing. They had four alligators, the largest one six feet long. From these hunters we had ample directions, and here turned almost west, passing Bayou L'Traverse, into which otherwise we would certainly have gone and been hopelessly entangled in the woods. So that day, working on in the mid-June heat, we came out of Bayou Dupont into Barataria, and six miles up came upon the first luggars lying along the village front. The residents of the forlorn settlement greeted us cheerfully, but we paddled on to Bayou Villere, and that night, for the last time, Hen and I put up the little green tent at Span- ish Man's Point in the exact spot we had pitched it more than three months ago. Old Man Cap- A " BANT AY AN " ENDS HER CRUISE 339 tain Johnson was running his crab line from the same leaky skiff when we hailed him. Then he hurriedly pulled to shore. "By Mighty, you boys done got back I I reckon you seen the hull gove'ment you been gone so long ! " He lammed a few houn' pups aside and grasped our hands shining-eyed. " Many's the time I said I'd give a pretty to see you. I been tryin' to save a durn little old melon for you out in the gyarden, but the tides come off that lake too salty and cleaned me out!" Good Old Man Captain! Not a bit daunted was he by the loss of a season's work. Always the fine cheery soul; and two years later, when I and a friend or two were called on to do the last possible simple service for him, we laid him under the oaks of Isle Bonne — " On my side, boys, with an arm up to keep the dirt out of my face, like a soldier ought to be buried ! " And to-day, as I write, the yellow waters of the great river to the North have poured through Hymelia crevasse, six feet deep over Old Man 840 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH Captain's grave. A fine old soldier of dreams! We paddled on up Barataria the next day, and into Harvey's canal, covering twenty miles in the heat. And where the locks cut through the levee we found Colonel Harvey, and the deputy sheriff who had first ushered us away with a wave of his hand: " It's the free state of Barataria, gentlemen ! The swamp is yours ! '* They asked of our hunting. We hadn't a pelt to show! Of our fishing. Not a yarn we had to relate! What had we done, then, in those three months? All this paddling of a stick of cypress through the bayous and swamps? We smiled contentedly : we had found peace, but can you explain that to anyone? We had the mem- ories of wondrous dawns, sunsets, nights of friendly fires and pipes, days of chance and labor, simple faiths and cheery greetings — the banal snarl of the cities was gone quite out of our brains, some callous heaviness from our souls. We stood on the levee looking across at the line of docks and ships before New Orleans with " BANT AY AN " ENDS HER CRUISE 341 some indefinable regret. Three months of aimless paddling — quite seven hundred miles of bayou, swamp, lake, and coast, in and out, crossing our tracks — and the wanderlust was still calling. " I tell you what let's do! " cried Hen. " Let's put the old tub through the locks and end the y'yage right down town on Canal Street I " I looked at the stubby Bantayan — and I looked at the lordly river. " Son, I'm with you. I hate to give her up ! ^ When we proposed going down the river in that pirogue Colonel Harvey protested. The Bantayan had no more license to be in the Mis- sissippi than Hen had to enter a beauty contest. But we insisted, and at last the Colonel yielded. " Well, paddle her into the locks ! I'll put her over, and she'll be the smallest craft ever locked through, I assure you." And he did — that thirteen-foot dugout in the 120-foot lock! Then we paddled out on the Father of Waters, stripped for a struggle, for if a liner's swell hit us, or a log, or the wake of a tug, it was " curtains " for the Bantayan, 342 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH we knew well enough. I had my note-books tied about my neck ready for the swim. But we made that six miles of river flood, down past docks and ocean liners and ferryboats, in good shape and, at the foot of Canal Street, ran the pirogue in past the wave-washed piles. It was dusk by then, and a big policeman standing under the sparkling arcs saw us and yelled: "Hey — you! Git out o' there, you greasers! That ferryboat " Barefooted, bareheaded, stripped to under- shirts and khakis, we climbed up the revetment, to stare one way at the city's lights, and the other at our homely little log lying on the planks. Hen lighted a cigarette and airily ignored the ferry " cop," who still eyed us with indignant suspicion, and all the throngs of hurrying House People who streamed on homeward with the merest glance of disapproving interest at us two bronzed tramps off the water. " Go on — kill yourselves at it, you poor strap- " BANT AY AN " ENDS HER CRUISE 343 hanging money-chasers," murmured Hen. " I don't care if I never come back. I don't care if — well, say — old topi How's your hair com- ing on now? That chap, Ponce, hasn't anything on us, has he?" " I know what happened to Ponce," I re- torted. " He'd somehow heard of the crawfish bisque that Felix Landry makes up in the Atcha- falaya lake country, or Old Mariano's cou'houil- lion down on Bayou St. Denis. And he just naturally wore himself out trying to find them." THE END H115 89 >-/^9lS&i-.-*^. ..*' .';.V^'-'V.^^'/^^\X./ r ," .^^ /. V .y <* *'...• .0*^ o •• ^ .(V^ -•^'•t JUL PRESERVATION TECHr 1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive Cranberry Township, PA wo aVJ T, • viy- ^^ ** -^ /- 1ECKMAN INOERY INC. «^ OCT 89 N. MANCHESTER, INDIANA 46962 v^'