28 WILD WINGS 



The wind now began to fail us still more, and at dusk, 

 when four miles from our destination, it was flat calm. Here 

 we anchored, and the guide rowed ashore to his home, intend- 

 ing to return early in the morning. 



Some time in the wee, small hours, when it was yet very 

 dark, one of the men, sleeping on deck, awoke, and, deciding 

 that something was wrong, aroused the company. Sure 

 enough, the wind had arisen strong from the northwest and 

 we were adrift, evidently well out in Florida Bay. We could 

 just make out two keys under our lee. The anchor had 

 become fouled and was dragging. When cleared, it held us, 

 just as the vessel began to ground in the mud. At daybreak 

 we got up jib and mainsail, all the sail we could carry in the 

 brisk wind, and beat in toward a point on the distant shore 

 where the glasses revealed a couple of buildings, which 

 proved to be our destination, where we were to make head- 

 quarters. 



We remained here a week, making trips into the interior, 

 and to neighboring keys. Several of the latter, three miles 

 off shore, we visited in a small boat, and here it was that 

 I first made real acquaintance with the Great White Heron, 

 a splendid snow-white creature that stands well-nigh as tall 

 as a man, measuring about seventy inches from bill to claws. 

 Approaching one of these rather small keys, I saw several of 

 the noble birds flying uneasily about over the trees, and, 

 clambering about for a time amid mangrove roots and slip- 

 pery mud, never ceasing to fight mosquitoes withal, I M'as 

 rewarded by coming to a spot where, in some particularly 

 large trees, several nests of the Great White Heron were 

 built. They were placed in crotches, twenty to thirty feet 

 from the ground — bulky, wide platforms of sticks, saucer- 

 shaped, profusely whitewashed, and each with two or three 

 snowy white young, in size and age from only a few days 



