Beyond lay the palmetto wigwams of the Indian servants who
worked in the island fields of corn and rice and sugar cane, made wild
cassava into flour, hunted with Mic-co and rode betimes with the island
exports into civilization by the roundabout road to the south which
skirted the swamp. Off to the west, in the curious chain of islands,
lay the palmetto shelter of the horses.
Mic-co placed a live coal upon the wrist of his young guest and quietly
watched. There was no flinching. The coal burned itself out upon the
motionless wrist of a Spartan.
Thereafter they rode hard and hunted, day by day. Carl worked in the
fields with Mic-co and the Indians, tramped at sunset over miles of
island path fringed with groves of bitter orange, disciplining his body
to a new endurance. A heavy sweat at the end in a closed tent of
buckskin which opened upon the shore of a sheltered inland lake,
hardened his aching muscles to iron.
Upon the great stone heating in the fire within the sweat-lodge an
Indian lad poured water. It rose in sweltering clouds of steam about
the naked body of Mic-co's guest, who at length plunged from the tent
into the chill waters of the lake and swam vigorously across to towels
and shelter.
Carl learned to pole a cypress canoe dexterously through miles of swamp
tangled with grass and lilies, through shallows and deep pools darkened
by hanging branches.
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