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March and Frank built while the young Elmers were in the North, and she and Ruth receive daily lessons in cooking, sewing, and all sorts of housekeeping from Mrs. Elmer and Aunt Chloe; and the latter says "she's proud to 'still Soufern precep's into deir sweet Norfern heads, bress em!" The Nancy Bell lay in the St.
While Frank was giving his father a brief account of what had happened to him since he ran away from home, the Elmers were exchanging the most important bits of news outside the front gate. They waited there while Mr. Elmer and Jan unhitched from a new farm-wagon a pair of fine mules that the former had bought and driven down from Tallahassee that day.
The river seemed narrow and dark after the open sea to which the Elmers had been so long accustomed, and from its banks the dense growth of oak, cedar, magnolia, palm, bay, cypress, elm, and sweet gum trees, festooned with moss, and bound together with a net-work of vines, rose like walls, shutting out the sunlight.
While this work was going on, one of the white men from the village came over to see his new neighbors. He brought with him a wild-turkey, half a dozen ducks, and a string of freshly caught fish, as cards of introduction. His name was Bevil, and he welcomed the Elmers most heartily, and said that he considered their coming a sign of better times for that section of the country. He told Mr.
After the Elmers had been helped up the steep incline of the boat, and were comfortably fixed near the fire, Captain Johnson and Jan, who said he didn't mind mud now any more than an alligator, took light-wood torches and set out to discover what had happened.
Jan, who had been sleeping on the upper side of the boat, was thrown out into the water when it fell, as some of the Elmers doubtless would have been had not their canvas shelter prevented such a catastrophe. The rest of the night was spent around the fire, which was kept up to enable Jan to dry his clothes. By daylight the tide had risen, so that the lighter again floated on an even keel.
By sunrise a simple breakfast of bread-and-butter and coffee had been eaten, and our emigrants were once more afloat and moving slowly up the tropical-looking river. About ten o'clock Captain Johnson pointed to a huge dead cypress-tree standing on the bank of the river some distance ahead, and told the Elmers that it marked one of the boundary-lines of Wakulla.
After supper, and when the dishes had all been washed and put away, the Elmers, Captain Johnson, and Jan sought the shelter of the canvas awning from the heavy night-dew which had begun to fall as soon as the sun went down. They lifted the sides, so that they could look out and see the fire around which the crew were gathered.
Bangs not only wanted Mark to meet with these practical men, and become familiar with their ways of conducting a business which was very similar to that which the Elmers had undertaken in Florida, but he knew that pine lumber was becoming scarce in that Northern country, and thought perhaps some of these men could be persuaded to emigrate to another land of pines if the idea was presented to them properly.
The weather had by this time become very warm and instead of wearing the thick clothing with which they had started, the Elmers found the very thinnest of their last summer's things all that they could bear. Mark had almost forgotten his sea-sickness, and spent much of his time with Jan Jansen, who taught him to make knots and splices, to box the compass and to steer.
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