MIKE AND TIGER TAIL PLAY CHESS. 405 



So when the savages fell back from the tower, leaving 

 the bodies of their two comrades on the sand, Mike 

 slowly and methodically loaded his rifle, under the cover 

 of the 2^almetto-bushes that covered the little islet, mea- 

 suring the charge of powder in an alligator's tooth that 

 hung at his girdle, and trimming off the spare corners 

 of his greased patch after the ball was fitted as carefully 

 as though he was shooting for a Christmas turkey, and 

 then taking ont his store of venison from his hunting shirt, 

 made his morning meal, as assured of a truce as though 

 in his cabin. The islet he was concealed upon was 

 scarcely twenty yards across, and yet so luxuriantly had 

 the palmetto overgrown it that no single bit of sand 

 could be seen. It looked like a floating garden. Under 

 the broad fan-like leaves of the j)lants the hunter had 

 made a pathway like an otter from the outer side to the 

 landward edge, and thence he looked out on the light, a 

 hundred yards across the open water and the long 

 extended beach, 



ISTo boat could appear on the open water, or any 

 approach be made to the lightliouse without its being 

 seen from the island. Mike knew that the Indians would 

 not expose themselves either in the one way or the other, 

 although they outnumbered him six to one. That they 

 were w^atching him he was perfectly assured, and he did 

 not give them the opportunity of seeing his hiding-place, 

 by any unwary motion, as it would only draAV their bul- 

 lets. He merely stretched out an arm over the deep 

 muzzled head of his hound, and slept. 



