Mass George | Page 7

banks where an alligator might be smiling
pleasantly as he thought how good a boy would be to eat.
CHAPTER FOUR.
I am obliged to run quickly through my early unadventurous days,
skipping, as it were, from memory to memory of things which
happened before life became serious and terrible for us all at the
plantation, and storms and peril followed rapidly after the first pleasant
calm. For it seems to me now, as I sit and think, that nothing could

have been happier than the life on the river during the first days of the
settlement. Of course, everybody had to work hard, but it was in a land
of constant sunshine, of endless spring and summer days--cold weather
was hardly known--and when a storm came, though the thunder and
lightning were terrible and the rain tremendous, everything afterwards
seemed to bound into renewed life, and the scent of the virgin forest
was delightful. All worked hard, but there was the certain repayment,
and in what must have been a very short time, the settlers had raised a
delightful home in the wilderness, where all was so dreamy and
peaceful that their weapons and military stores seemed an encumbrance,
and many felt that they would have done more wisely if they had
brought agricultural implements instead.
Before we left England, as I have told you, the adventurers who met at
my father's rooms talked of the ruthless savage--the lurking Indian of
the forest and prairie, and also of our neighbours the Spaniards; but as
soon as we reached the place, it seemed to all that the Indians did not
exist; and as to the Spaniards, they were far south, separated by long
stretches of open land, forests, river, and swamp, and might, for aught
we knew, be at the other side of the world.
I was sitting indoors one bright sunny day, and I had just reached
finishing distance with a Latin translation my father had left me to do,
when I heard a quick "Hist!" Looking up, I saw Morgan at the window.
"'Most done?" he said.
"Yes."
"Then come along, I'll show you something."
I bounded out, to find him armed with a stick about six feet long,
provided with a little fork at the end made by driving in a couple of
nails and bending them out.
"What is it?" I cried, excitedly.
"Enemy. Get yourself a good stout stick."

"Rake-handle do?"
"Yes, capital."
I ran to the tool-shed and came back directly, panting.
"Now," I said, "what enemy is it--an alligator?"
"No. You said you didn't believe there were any snakes here. I've got
one to show you now."
"Yes; but where?"
"Never you mind where. All you've got to do is to creep after me silent
like; and when you see me pin him down with this fork, you can kill
him."
"But what a cowardly way," I cried; "it isn't fair."
"Well, look you, I never did see such a boy as you are, Master George.
Do you know what sort of a snake it is?"
"How should I? You wouldn't tell me."
"Well, you talk as if it was a little adder, foot and half long, or a snake
at home that you might pick up in your hand. Why, it's a real
rattlesnake."
"Oh!" I exclaimed, excitedly.
"Over six foot long, and as thick as my wrist."
"Pooh!" I said, with my imagination full of boa-constrictors big enough
to entwine and crush us up. "That's nothing!"
"Nothing! Do you know one bite from a fellow like this will kill a man?
And you talk about fighting fair. Nice lot of fairness in the way they
fight. You come along, and promise to be very careful, or I shan't go."

"Oh, I'll be careful," I said.
"But if you feel afraid, say so, and I'll go alone."
"I don't feel afraid," I replied; "and if I did," I added with a laugh, "I
wouldn't say I was."
"Not you," he muttered, and he held up a finger, and led the way down
by the garden, and from thence into the uncleared forest, where a faint
track wandered in and out among the great, tall, pillar-like trunks
whose tops shut out the light of day, all but where at intervals what
seemed to us like rays of golden dust, or there were silvery-looking
lines of finest cobweb stretching from far on high, but which proved to
be only delicate threads of sunshine which had pierced the great canopy
of leaves.
Beyond this I knew that there was an opening where all was warm and
glowing that was subdued and gloomy now, and it was not long before
I saw, without a doubt, that Morgan was making for this clearing, and
in all probability for one of