Black Caesar's Clan : A Florida Mystery Story Read online

  Black Caesar's Clan

  by

  Albert Payson Terhune

  THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED, MOST GRATEFULLY TO MY FRIEND JOHN E. PICKETT EDITOR OF "THE COUNTRY GENTLEMAN"

  CONTENTS

  I THE HIDDEN PATH II THE MAN IN THE DARK III THE MOCKING BIRD IV THE STRANGER FROM NOWHERE V TRAPS AND TRAPPER VI IN THE DAY OF BATTLE VII SECRETS VIII THE SIEGE IX THE FIGURE IN WHITE X THE GHOST TREE

  FOREWORD

  A wiggling, brainless, slimy atom began it. He and trillionsof his kind. He was the Coral Worm ("Anthozoa," if you prefer).

  He and his tribe lived and died on the sea-bottom, successivegenerations piling higher on the skeletons and lifework--orthe life-loafing, for they were lazy atoms--of those that wentbefore. At last the coral reef crawled upward until inuncharted waters it was tall enough to smash a woodenship-keel.

  Then, above the surface of the waves it nosed its way, grayishwhite, whalebacked. From a hundred miles distant floated acigar-shaped mangrove-bud, bobbing vertically, through theocean, until it chanced to touch the new-risen coral reef.The mangrove, alone of all trees, will sprout and grow in saltwater. The mangrove's trunk, alone of all trunks, isimpervious to the corrosive action of the sea.

  At once the bud set to work. It drove an anchor-root into thereef, then other roots and still others. It shot up to theheight of a foot or two, and thence sent thick red-brown rootsstraight downward into the coral again.

  And so on, until it had formed a tangled root-fence for manyyards alongshore. After which, its work being done, themangrove proceeded to grow upward into a big and glossy-leavedshade-tree, making buds for further fences.

  Meanwhile, every particle of floating seaweed, every dead fishor animal, all vegetation, etc., which chanced to wash intothat fence-tangle, stayed there. It is easier for matter, aswell as for man, to get entangled in mangrove roots than toget out again.

  The sun and the rain did their work on this decaying stuff.Thus, soil was formed, atop the coral and in the hollowsscooped out of its surface by wind or tide.

  Presently, a coconut, hurled from its stem in the Bahamas orin Cuba, by a hurricane, set its palmleaf sail-sprout and wasgale-driven across the intervening seas, floating ashore onthe new-risen land. There it sprouted. Birds, winds, waves,brought germs of other trees. The subtropical island wascomplete.

  Island, key, reef--reef, key, island--with the interveninggaps of azure-emerald water, bridged, bit by bit, by thecoral,--to-day a sea-surface, to-morrow a gray-white reef,next day a mangrove hedge, and the next an expanse ofspectacular verdure and glistening gray-white sand.

  So Florida was born.

  So, at least, its southern portion was born, and is still indaily process of birth. And, according to Agassiz and manyanother, the entire Peninsula may have arisen in this fashion,from the green-blue sea.

  Dredge and shovel are laboring hard to guide or check theendless undersea coral growth before bay and channel andlagoon shall all be dry land. The wormlike, lazy,fast-multiplying Anthozoa is fighting passively but withterrific power, to set at naught all man's might and wit.

  In time, coral sand-spit and mangrove swamp were cleared for awonderland playground, of divine climate whither wintertourists throng by the hundred thousand. In time, too, thesesand-spits and swamps and older formations of the sunnypeninsula furnished homes and sources of livelihood or ofwealth to many thousands more, people, these, to whom Floridais a Career, not a Resort.

  As in every land which has grown swiftly and along differentlines from the rest of the country, there still are mysteryand romance and thrills to be found lurking among the keys andback of the mangrove-swamps and along the mystic reaches ofsunset shoreline.

  With awkward and inexpert touch, my story seeks to set forthsome of these.

  Understand, please, that this book is rank melodrama. It hasscant literary quality. It is not planned to edify. Its onlymission is to entertain you and,--if you belong to theaction-loving majority, to give you an occasional thrill.

  Perhaps you will like it. Perhaps you will not. But I do notthink you will go to sleep over it. There are worserecommendations than that for any book.

  ALBERT PAYSON TERHUNE.

  "Sunnybank," Pompton Lakes, New Jersey.

  BLACK CAESAR'S CLAN