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Updated: May 11, 2025
"What is the matter with Joe?" asked Sam after the boy had gone out for the twentieth time. "I think he's afraid we're all going to be drowned," said Tom. "Drowned? How?" "Well, he says wood will float, and so he thinks when the water comes up under the drift-pile, it will all float away." "What nonsense!" exclaimed Sam. "Why didn't you tell him better, Tom?" "I did; but he sticks to it, and "
He dreaded the meeting with Sam nearly as much as he dreaded the terrible fate which seemed to him the only alternative, namely, that of remaining in the drift-pile to starve. "Come down this way," said Sam. "Well," answered Jake when he had moved a little way toward Sam. "Do you see a hole in the top, just above your head?" asked Sam. "Yes, but I can't see the sky through it."
The drift-pile, or hammock, as it is sometimes called at the South, had been years in forming, being drift-wood which had floated down the river during winter and spring freshets, and as it had lodged against the trees it lay only on their upper side, where it was piled up into a perpendicular wall nearly twenty feet high. Thence it stretched away up the river for a hundred yards or more.
Tom went out and examined his stake, which showed that the water was not more than an inch or two over the bank, and was not rising very rapidly now; but he could see nothing of Joe anywhere. He went to the look-out, but the boy was not there, and a diligent search through the drift-pile, showed that he was nowhere in the neighborhood of the fortress.
Turning away he began anew to search the drift-pile, looking now for the body of a dead girl, though with but little hope of finding it. For an hour he searched in vain, then began to scramble down river, searching the bank. A mile below the first drift-pile he came upon a second, caught by a sand-bar, that, thrusting itself out in the water, snared the smaller debris.
All this must be told sometime and whenever it is told somebody or something must wait somewhere, and I really think Jake Elliott may as well wait there in the drift-pile as not. He deserves nothing better. During the summer of the year 1813, while the United States and great Britain were at war, a general Indian war came on which raged with especial violence in middle and southern Alabama.
He was so anxious for his brother's return that he spent the greater part of his time on the drift-pile where he had built himself a little observatory, so arranged that he could see in every direction without the possibility of being seen in his turn. Sitting there in his look-out, watching for Sam, he had time to think of many things.
Water two inches deep won't float a great saw-log, because a great saw-log weighs more than the amount of water it takes to cover its lower part two or three inches deep; and water two or three feet deep won't float a drift-pile twenty feet high, because such a drift-pile weighs a good deal more than a body of water two or three feet deep, of its own length and width.
The boys rarely ever left the trees during the daytime, and when they did so they were careful first to satisfy themselves that there were no savages in the neighborhood. The creek, of which Joe spoke, emptied into the river a short distance above the root fortress, and, along its banks was a dense mass of undergrowth, which skirted the river below, all the way to the drift-pile.
She had discovered too that the sand, just below the surface was wet, and that this served almost as good a purpose as the moss itself when thrown on the fire. The poor little girl was utterly tired out at last, however, and when the fire seemed to be subsiding, she had yielded to Tom's entreaties, and going into the drift-pile had laid down to rest.
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