Francis Goulding - The Young Marooners on the Florida Coast

"But how can we be on our guard, father," asked Mary with a smile, "when we are too far gone in sleep or in thought, to know what we are about!"

"We must take the precaution beforehand," he replied. "Make it a rule never to sleep nor to study in a partial current of air; and also remember that the first moment you perceive the tingling sensation of an incipient cold, you must obey the warning which kind nature gives you or else must bear the consequences."

Mary's cold was pretty severe. For days she suffered from cough and pain. But that day's lecture on currents of air, followed by so impressive an illustration, was probably more useful than her lesson in arithmetic; certainly it was longer remembered and more frequently acted upon.

True to his promise, Riley appeared at the appointed time with his supply of game. He said, however, that he should remain only a few days, because he had left his young wife sick. It interested Mary not a little to perceive that a savage could feel and act so much like a civilized being; and she was trying to think of something complimentary to say upon this occasion, when he threw her all aback, by adding, that this was his youngest and favourite wife.

"What! have you two wives?" she exclaimed in horror.

"Yes, only two, now; one dead."

Her mind was sadly changed at this evidence of heathenism; but ere the day was over she received a still more impressive proof.

Dr. Gordon perceiving that he looked sad whenever an allusion was made to his home, he asked him if his wife was seriously sick, to which he answered, No.

"When I go home, last week," said he, "my squaw had a fine boy, big and fat. My heart glad. But I look and see a big hole in his mouth, from here to here," pointing from the lip to the nose.

"That is what we call a hare lip," said Dr. Gordon, "it is not uncommon."

"I sorry very much," continued Riley. "Child too ugly."

"But it can be easily cured," observed Dr. Gordon.

Riley looked at him inquiringly, and Dr. Gordon added, "O, yes, it can be easily cured. If you will bring your child here, any time, I will stop that hole in half an hour; and there will be no sign of it left, except a little scar, like a cut."

The Indian shook his head mournfully, "Can't bring him. Too late now."

"O, the child is dead?" inquired the Doctor. "I am sorry."

"Dead now," replied Riley. "I look at him one day, two day, tree day. Child too ugly. I throw him in the water."

"What!" exclaimed Dr. Gordon, suddenly remembering that it was the practice of the Indians to destroy all their deformed children. "You did not drown it?"

"Child ugly too much," answered Riley, with a softened tone of voice. "Child good for nothing. I throw him in the water."

Dr. Gordon was not only shocked, as any man of feeling would have been, under the circumstances, but he felt as a Christian, whose heart moved with compassion towards his dark skinned brother. He uttered not one word of rebuke or of condemnation; his time for speaking to the purpose had not yet come; and he carefully avoided everything in word and look which should widen the space which naturally exists between the white man and the Indian, the Christian and the pagan.

Poor Mary! She no sooner heard this confession, than she sidled away from her interesting savage, until wholly beyond his reach, and could scarcely look at him during his stay that week, without feelings akin to fear. An Indian, she learned, was an Indian after all.

While Riley was there the boys often borrowed his boat, and Harold tried to imitate his dexterity in the use of the paddle. They soon became great friends. On one of their excursions for fish, they went, by his direction, around a point of land where the head of a fallen live oak lay in the water, and its partially decayed limbs were encrusted with barnacles and young oysters. There they soon caught a large supply of very fine fish of various sorts, particularly of the sheephead, – a delicious fish, shaped somewhat like the perch, only stouter and rounder, beautifully marked with broad alternate bands of black and white around the body, and varying in weight from half a pound to ten or fifteen pounds.

No one was more delighted than Frank, with the result of the excursion; for he was fond, as a cat, of everything in the shape of fish. But, it is said, there is no rose without its thorn; and so he found in the present case. He was enjoying, rather voraciously, the luxury of his favourite food, when a disorderly bone lodged crossways in the narrow part of his throat, and gave him excessive pain. Frank was a polite boy. Avoiding, as far as possible, disturbing the others by his misfortune, he slipped quietly from the table, and tried every means to relieve himself. But it was not until he had applied to his father, and, under his direction, swallowed a piece of hard bread, that he was able to resume his place. 3 3 Unwilling to mislead any of my young readers, by describing expedients and remedies that might not serve them in case of necessity, I have submitted my manuscript to several persons for inspection, and among others to a judicious physician and surgeon. It never occurred to me that in mentioning so simple a thing as swallowing a crust for the removal of a fish-bone, I could possibly do harm. To my surprise, however, my medical friend observed, that he supposed Dr. Gordon knew that the fishbone, which Frank swallowed, was small and flexible , or he would not have used that expedient. "If," said he, "the substance which lodges in the throat is so stiff (a pin for instance) as not to be easily bent, the attempt to force it down by swallowing a piece of bread may be unsafe; it may lacerate the lining membrane, or, being stopped by the offending substance, it may cause the person to be worse choked than before." "But, Doctor, what should the poor fellow do in such a case?" he was asked. "I suspect Dr. Gordon would have used a large feather?" "Indeed!" "Yes, he would have rumpled its plume, so as to reverse the direction of the feathery part, and would have thrust that down the throat, below the pin or bone. On withdrawing the feather, the substance would be either found adhering to its wet sides, or raised on end, so that it could be easily swallowed." With many thanks for this suggestion, the promise was made that the young readers of Robert and Harold should have the benefit of his advice. But I think that the best plan is to avoid the fish-bones.

Being not quite so humble as he was polite, however, he began to condemn the fish instead of himself for his accident. His father told him he had no right to say one word against the fish, which was remarkably free from bones, and was just preparing to give him a gentle lecture on gormandizing, when Frank, foreseeing what was to come, was adroit enough to seize a moment's pause in the conversation, and to divert the subject, by asking with a very droll air,

"I wonder, father, if these sheephead are of the same kind with that one that butted the dumplings?"

"I do not know what dumplings you mean," said his father.

"O, did you never hear the story of the sheep's head and the dumplings? Well, brother Robert can tell you all about it."

"No, no," returned his father, who saw through the little fellow's stratagem. "No, no, Frank, it is your own story, and you must go through with it."

This was a trial, for Frank had never in his life made so long an extempore speech in the presence of the assembled family, as he had now imposed upon himself. But, in the desperation of the moment, he mustered courage, and thus spoke,

"There was once an old woman that left her little boy to mind a pot that had in it a sheep's head and some dumplings boiling for dinner, while she went to a neighbour's house to attend some sort of preaching. The little boy did not seem to have much sense; and had never minded a pot before; so when he saw the water boiling over, and the sheep's head and the dumplings bobbing about in every direction, he became frightened and ran for his mother, bawling at the top of his voice, 'Mammy! the dumplings! run!' She saw him coming in among the people, and tried to stop his bawling by shaking her head and winking her eyes at him; but he would not stop. He crowded right up to her, saying, 'Mammy, you needn't to wink nor to blink, for the sheep's head is butting all the dumplings out of the pot!'"