CHAPTER VI

DICK’S HUNT FOR HIS CHUM

An hour’s paddling brought Dick and Johnny to the mouth of Turner’s River, up which they headed the canoe.  A strong tide setting up the river nearly doubled their speed.

“Lucky for us that the tide is running our way,” said Dick.

“Not much luck about it.  Mr. Streeter knew about the tide.  That’s why he hurried us off ’fore dinner.  Tide’ll be other way this evenin’,” replied Johnny.

“Isn’t Mr. Streeter a brick?”

“He’s all that.  Lots o’ people ’d have hard times ’f he moved away.  He helps th’ Injuns, too, when they’re in hard luck.”

The first fork in the river was a mile from its mouth and Dick, who was steering, took the right branch, which led southeast, although it was much the smaller stream.  At the next parting of the stream one branch led to the east and the other due south.  Fortunately Johnny knew which fork to take, and for a mile or two there was no trouble.  Then the river opened out into a broad shallow bay, filled with little keys, but nothing to tell Dick which way to steer.  He tried to keep to a southeast course, but ran into shallows which soon ended in a pocket from which they had to back out.  Often they followed a good channel for a mile, only to have it end in an oyster reef, and again they had to turn back.  A pair of dolphins lifted their heads above the surface in front of the canoe and with a sniff of fright started away across the bay like an express train.  They were great creatures, nearly nine feet long, and were followed in their flight by a baby dolphin less than half their size, which rose within reach of Dick’s paddle, sniffed impertinently in his face and skittered away after his mother as fast as he could wiggle his funny flat tail.

“Better foller them porpoises,” said Johnny; “they know the channel.”

The dolphin is so uniformly miscalled porpoise, on the west coast and everywhere else, that the creature will soon come to think that it really is a porpoise.

Dick followed the dolphins as long as he could see them and was led into a deep channel which opened out into a series of broad bays through which they paddled until, among the sunken lands of the flooded mangrove keys, they came upon a shell mound, the site of an old abandoned plantation.  Dick’s aching muscles and Johnny’s clamorous stomach had long been pleading for a rest, and the boys landed on the mound for a picnic dinner.  They opened a box which Mrs. Streeter had given them as they started from her home, and found a bountiful lunch of cold venison, baked sweet potatoes, boiled eggs, bread, butter, orange marmalade and two pineapples.

“Gee!” said Dick.  “Are we going to live this way, Johnny?” but Johnny only grinned.