“They’ll be a bait o’ times when I won’t git to go, when you git to fishin’,” she pleaded. “Hit’ll make me feel acquainted-like to go when I kin.”

It was not the folk she longed to know, but the river. The small islands were entities with whom she would become familiar. The river seemed uninhabited as they rowed to the mouth. After the wild-life of the piney-woods and the populous hammock, it was strange to see no live things moving, no birds, no small furry faces turned to her for a brief moment. After she had lived on these back-waters of the Gulf for a few weeks, she would know where to look for the few shy birds and animals. She began to distinguish a human habitation here and one there. There was only a handful of families on the lower river. Houses on islands were often sunk out of sight among palms and cedars. Others lay up the winding salt creeks and were not visible from the river.

The chief of the small fishing clan lived up Channel Creek. The creek was no more than a canal connecting two of the tidal rivers. It wound interminably, like a tangled thread. The reeds and grasses were so high, the route so tortuous, that the boat seemed to be making no headway, land-bound and forgotten between flexible green walls.

Cap’n Harper’s house sat back in the marsh, reared high on stilts. A swaying plank walk sagged for two hundred yards from wharf to house. The wharf was over an old oyster bed. It was low tide and the shells showed thick in gray muck. A sizable fishing dory with a sturdy in-board motor rocked at the wharf.

Mart was not gone long. He came back to report that Harper had just come in from a night’s fishing, sleepy and a little ugly.

“He didn’t shore enough promise I could fish for him,” Mart said. “He done tol’ me to come along an’ fish with ’em a whiles, thouten no shares nor wages, to see could I git the hang of it.”

“You kin git the hang of it all right,” Florry said confidently. “You done good on the lake. You belong to do good at it.”

“Hit’s all right,” Mart said. “He’s got to see does my ways suit his ways. He’ll likely give me fish and we got rations for a while and a leetle more cash money. They ain’t no hurry.”

“No, they ain’t no hurry,” Florry agreed comfortably. “No use a-hurryin’ no ways, no time.”

When Cap’n Harper told them they might stay, Mart rowed Florry in and out among the islands at the mouth of the river, house-hunting. They had their choice of several deserted houses. The island they chose was on the incurve of a cove. High, it still was not visible either from Gulf or river. Florry liked the feeling that no one could look in. No human life came within her vision, but there would be enough to see. Far out she could glimpse the fishing boats. There was never anything else. The steamship lanes were farther west.