The Wreck of the Red Bird: A Story of the Carolina Coast. Eggleston George Cary
To define him more particularly, he is a member of the trygonidæ family, familiarly known as sting rays, and called by negroes and fishermen, and nearly every body else on the coast, stingarees."
"Where on earth did you get that jargon from?" asked Charley.
"It isn't jargon, and I got it from my uncle. He told me one day not to call these things stingarees, but sting rays, and then for fun rattled off a lot of scientific talk at me, which I made him repeat until I knew it by heart. What I know about sting rays is this: there are a good many kinds of them in different quarters of the world. In the North they have the American sting ray, which is much larger than ours down here, though we sometimes catch them two or three feet wide. Ours is the European sting ray, I believe; at any rate, it isn't the American. They are all of them closely alike. They are brown on top and white beneath. You see the shape – not unlike that of a turtle, but with something like wings at the sides, and with a skin instead of a shell, and no legs. The most interesting things about them are their long, slender tails. See," picking up the amputated tail and turning it over; "see the gentleman's weapons. Those bony spikes, with their barbed sides, make very ugly wounds whenever the sting ray gets a good shot at a leg or an arm. The negroes say the barbs are poisonous, like a rattlesnake's fangs; but the scientific folk dispute that. However that may be, a man was laid up for three months right here in Bluffton, during the war, with a foot so bad that the surgeons thought they would have to cut it off, and all from a very slight wound by a sting-ray."
"Ugh!" cried Jack. "It isn't necessary to suppose poison; to have one of those horrible bones driven into your flesh and then drawn out with the notches all turned the wrong way, is enough to make any amount of trouble, without adding poison."
"Perhaps that accounts for the stories told of the Indians shooting poisoned arrows," said Ned. "They used sting-ray stings for arrow-heads at any rate."
"And very capital arrow-heads they would make," said Charley, examining the spikes, which were about the size of a large lead-pencil, about three or four inches long, and barbed all along the sides, so that they looked not unlike rye beards under a microscope. These spikes are placed not at the end of the tail, but near the middle.
"Are sting rays good to eat?" asked Jack, examining the slimy, flabby creature.
"It all depends upon the taste of the eater," replied Ned. "The negroes sometimes eat the flaps or wings, and most white people on the coast have curiosity enough to taste them. They always say there's nothing bad about the taste, but I never knew anybody to take to sting rays as a delicacy. Some people say that alligator steaks are good, and a good many people eat sharks now and then. For my part good fish are too plentiful here for me to experiment with bad ones."
The fishing was resumed now, and it was not long before Jack confessed that the fish were beginning to "bother" him by their abundance and eagerness.
"Ned," he said, "I apologize. If you've any fiddlers about your clothes, I believe I'll confine my attention to sheephead; I'm tired of pulling fish in."
"Well, let's go ashore, then," said Ned, laughing, "and have dinner."
"Do fish bite in that way generally down here?" asked Charley.
"Yes, when the tide isn't too full. Fishing really gets to be a bore here, it is so easy to fill a boat; anybody can do that as easily as throw a cast net."
"Now hush that," said Charley. "Jack has owned up and apologized, and agreed that he knows more than he did this morning."
CHAPTER IV
PLANS AND PREPARATIONS
After dinner the boys lolled upon the piazza, and Ned answered his companions' questions concerning Bluffton and region round about.
"The water here is called South May River," he said, "but why, I don't know. It certainly isn't a river. This whole coast is a ragged edge of land with all sorts of inlets running up into it, and with islands, big and little, dotted about off the mainland. Yonder is Hilton Head away over near the horizon. Hunting Island lies off to the left, and Bear's Island further away yet. The little marsh islands have no names. They are simply bars of mud on which a kind of rank grass, called salt marsh, grows. Some of them are covered by every tide; others only by spring-tides, while others are covered by all except neap-tides."
"Is there any land over that way, to the right of Hilton Head?" Charley asked.
"Good idea!" exclaimed Ned. "I say, let's go buffalo-hunting and crusoeing and yachting all at once."
"What sort of answer is that nonsense to my question?" asked Charley, with mock dignity and real doubt as to his friend's meaning.
"Well, I jumped a little, that's all," said Ned. "Your question suggested my answer. Bee Island lies over there, out of sight. It's my uncle's land. It used to be a sea-island plantation, but was abandoned during the war and has never been occupied since. It has grown up and is as wild as if it had never been cultivated at all. The cattle were left on it when the place was abandoned, and they went completely wild. During the war parties of soldiers from both sides used to go over there to hunt the wild cattle. Sometimes they met each other and hunted each other instead of the cattle. Now it just occurred to me that we might have jolly fun by fitting out an expedition, sailing over there in the Red Bird– you see these land-locked waters are never very rough or dangerous – and camping there as long as we like. When we are in the boat, we will be yachtsmen of the 'swellest' sort; when we're on the desert island – or deserted, rather, for it is desert only in the past tense – we'll be Robinson Crusoes; and when we want beef we'll kill a wild cow, if there are any left, and be buffalo hunters, for what's a buffalo but a sort of wild cow?"
"Is the fishing good over there?" asked Jack, "for I'm not so much bothered by the fish yet that I want to quit catching them."
"As good as here."
"All right, let's go," said Jack.
"So say I," responded Charley. "When shall we start?"
"To-morrow morning. It will take all this afternoon to get ready," said Ned.
With that they set to work collecting necessary materials.
"We must have all sorts of things," said Ned.
"Yes," answered Jack, "particularly in our characters as Robinson Crusoes."
"How's that?" asked Charley. "He had nothing. He was shipwrecked, you know."
"Yes, I know. But did you never notice what extraordinary luck he had? Absolutely every thing that was indispensable to him came ashore or was brought ashore from that accommodating wreck. Why, he even got gunpowder enough to last him, and whatever the ship didn't yield the island did. I always suspected that Robinson Crusoe loaded that ship himself with special reference to his needs on the island, and picked out the right island, and then ran the ship on the rocks purposely."
This interpretation of Robinson Crusoe's character and life was a novel one to Jack's companions; but their plan for their expedition did not include any purpose to deny themselves needed conveniences.
The large duck gun was taken down from its hooks in the hall, and a good supply of ammunition was put into the shot pouches and powder flask. This included one pouch of buckshot and one of smaller shot for fowls. The fishing tackle was already in the boat house, as we know. An axe, a hatchet, a piece of bacon, to be used in frying fish, a small bag of rice, another of flour, and another of sweet potatoes, a box of salt, another of sugar – both water-tight, – and some coffee, completed the list of stores as planned by the boys. Maum Sally contemplated the collection, after the boys had declared it to be complete, and exclaimed;
"Well, I 'clar now!"
"What's the matter, Maum Sally?" asked Ned.
"Nothin', on'y it's jis zacly like a passel o' boys, dat is."
"What is?"
"W'y wot for is you a takin' things to eat?" asked Sally.
"Because we'll want to eat them," said Ned.
"Raw?" asked Sally.
"That's so," said Ned, with a look of confusion. "Boys, we haven't put in a single cooking utensil!"
Laughing