The Wreck of the Red Bird: A Story of the Carolina Coast

"Certainly," said Ned, "if you know how."

"Know how? Why, there's no knack in that; anybody can do it."

With this confident boast Jack took the net and gave a violent cast. Neglecting to relax the rope at the right moment, however, the confident young gentleman made trouble for himself. The lead line swung around rapidly, the net wrapped itself around Jack, and the leaden balls struck him with sufficient violence to hurt. He lost his balance at the same instant, and, his legs being held close together by the wet net, he could not step out to recover himself. The result was that he fell sprawling into the water and was fished out in a very wet condition by his companions.

Jack was a boy capable of seeing the fun even in an accident of which he was the victim. He stood still while the net was unwound, and for a moment afterward. Then, seeing that the other boys were too considerate to laugh at him while in trouble, he quietly said:

"I told you I could do it."

"Well, you caught more in the net than I did," said Ned. "Now take hold again and I'll show you how to manage it. Your wet clothes won't hurt you. Sea-water doesn't give one cold."

A few lessons made Jack fairly expert in casting, but Charley had no mind to court mishaps, and would not try his skill. The pail was soon well filled with shrimps, and the boys returned to the boat house, where Jack changed his wet clothes for dry ones.

Then all haste was made to get the boat out, in order that they might fish while the tide was right. The boat was a large launch named Red Bird; a boat twenty-four feet long, very broad in the beam, and very stoutly built. It was provided with a mast and sail, but these were of no use now as there was no wind, and the bars on which Ned meant to fish were only a few hundred yards distant.

No sooner was the anchor cast than the lines were out, and the fish began accepting the polite invitation extended to them.

"What sort of fish are these, Ned?" asked Charley, as he took one from his hook.

"That," said Ned, looking round, "is a whiting – so called, I believe, because it is brown, and yellow, and occasionally pink and purple, with changeable silk stripes over it. That's the only reason I can think of for calling it a whiting. It is never white. It isn't properly a whiting for that matter. It isn't at all the same as the whiting of the North, at any rate."

"Why, they're changing color," exclaimed Jack.

"Look! they actually change color under your very eyes."

"Yes, it's a way whiting have," said Ned. "And some other fish do the same thing, I believe."

"Dolphins do," said Charley.

"Yes, but the whiting isn't even a second cousin to the dolphin. That's a croaker you've got, Jack; spot on his tail – splendid fish to eat – and he croaks. Listen!"

The fish did begin to utter a curious croaking sound, which surprised the boys. Other croakers were soon in the boat, and the company of them set up a croaking of which the inhabitants of a frog pond might not have been ashamed.

"They call croakers 'spot' in Virginia," said Ned, "because of the spot near the tail. Look at it. Isn't it pretty? and isn't the fish itself a beauty?"

"But the whiting is prettier," said Charley; "at least in colors. I say, Ned, do you know if whiting ever dine on kaleidoscopes?"

"Look out! hold that fellow away from you! hold the line at arm's length and don't let the brute strike you with his tail for your life!" exclaimed Ned, excitedly, as Charley drew a curious-looking creature up.

"What is the thing?" asked both the up-country boys in a breath.

"A stingaree," replied Ned, "and as ugly as a rattlesnake. See how viciously he strikes with his tail! Let him down slowly till his tail touches the bottom of the boat. There! Now wait till he stops striking for a moment and then clap your foot on his tail. Ah! now you've got him. Now cut the tail off close to the body and the fellow's harmless."

"What is the creature anyhow?" asked Jack, who had suspended his fishing operations to observe the monster. "What did you call it?"

"Well, the gentleman belongs to a large and distinguished family. To speak broadly, he is a plagiostrome chondropterygian, of the sub-order raiiæ, commonly called skates. 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.