Chapter IX: The "devil's Island."

Proud of my achievement, I shouldered the prize, and started to return to the skiff.

I had not gone three steps, when I again stopped, to simply ask myself the way. I saw that I had lost it.

The chase after the wounded eagle, both tortuous and prolonged, had carried me out of sight of the deadwood as well as the light let down through its leafless branches. I was once more in the midst of a continuous twilight.

I looked for my tracks. Taking time and pains, I might have discovered and retraced them. But the spread-fans of the palmettoes quite covered the ground, and I had not the patience to put them aside for such exploration. I supposed the island to be of only some forty or fifty acres in extent; and, by keeping straight on in any direction, I must soon come to its edge. Following this, would in time bring me to the skiff.

Taking a straight shoot through the underwood, I walked briskly on, and, as I expected, soon saw the sunlight gleaming before me.

There was an opening with water; but, as I drew near to it, I could see it was not the river, but a sort of lagoon or pool of stagnant water.

I kept for a short distance along its edge, and discovered that it communicated with a "bayou" that appeared to lead out into the river.

I fancied that it would take me the wrong way, and was turning to make a traverse in the opposite direction, when something down under the bank caught my eye. I first took it for a floating log; but on closer scrutiny it proved to be an old canoe of the kind known as a "dug-out."

It was moored to the root of one of the great cypresses that overshadowed the water. It was partially concealed by the outstretched fronds of the palmettoes that grew around the root of the cypress.

On seeing the dug-out, I supposed there was some other party upon the island; but, stepping down and examining it, I saw that its rude hawser of twisted grape-vine must have been holding it there for months. Some worthless, worn-out craft, abandoned, perhaps forgotten.

While making this reflection, my eye wandered to the opposite side of the pool. There I observed other signs of human presence, though not recent. There was a little spot of cleared ground, above a high bank that looked as if it had been used for a landing. Fragments of coarse canvas, such as is used for cotton "bagging," were strewn over it, and there were the ashes of an old fire.

I thought it strange to see such relics in that solitary place, and walked away, wondering what could have taken them there.

My speculations, however, were soon interrupted by the necessity of finding my way back to the skiff, which proved more difficult than I had expected.

Not till I had wandered about for a full half-hour, and scratched my skin among the sharp spikes of the palmettoes, did I succeed in reaching my place of debarkation, and then only by shouting myself hoarse, and getting a responsive shout from the skiffman.

"I's glad, massa, you got safe 'board 'gen," said he, as I stepped into the boat.

"Why?" I asked, wondering at the remark as well as the alacrity with which the darky pulled away from the cottonwood.

"Kase I t'ink dat 'ere island a dangersome place."

"Dangerous place! In what way?"

"Doan' no, massa, doan' no. But folks do say de debbil hab been see'd an' heerd dar ob nights. One ob Mass' Bradley's black people tole me so. Mass' Bradley's plantation not far off on toder side, but none o' dem niggas ebba goes on dat island. Nob'dy else ebba go dar. Sartin shoo de place am ha'nted."

I could now comprehend why my companion had shown such aversion to accompany me in my excursion.

I could not help smiling at his superstition, though I was not a little chagrined at his not having sooner confided it to me, so that I might have made a more careful exploration of the interesting locality.

When I thought of the gloomy obscurity of its shadows, the deep, dark lagoon, that slept stagnant under its trees, the weird drapery of Spanish moss, that thickly festooned their branches, I did not so much wonder at the superstitious awe with which my sable-skinned companion had been led to regard it. It was just the kind of spot to be "haunted;" but no doubt the abandoned dug-out, and the other _reliquiæ_ I had observed, had I taken time to examine them, would have given a clue to the "debbil," supposed by Jake and his colored acquaintance of the Bradley plantation, to have made it his abiding-place.