I got back to the beach to find that my equipment had not been disturbed. I quickly put it on and moved into the water, took a compass bearing on the opening to the sea and submerged.
I made it back to my boat without incident. I surfaced behind the boat, intending to put my gear on the small swim platform and climb up the ladder that hung into the water.
I undid the waterproof bag holding the nine millimeter and threw it into the boat. I didn't want to lose it or get it wet. My tanks, fins, and mask were on the platform when I noticed a small craft moving on the surface, just to the right side of my boat. I was still in the water, and my gun was on the floor of the boat.
I reached for the dive knife that was in the scabbard fastened around my ankle. If I could get into the boat, I'd use my pistol. If not, maybe I could take out the occupant of the boat coming at me. The knife wouldn't be a whole lot of protection, unless my assailant was in the water.
The craft materialized out of the darkness, like a ghost. It was a kayak. A black man was paddling toward the stern of my boat, where I hung impotently in the water. I had been discovered. I wondered why they didn't use one of the go-fast boats, but maybe they wanted to do this quietly.
The kayak came abreast of me, inertia pushing it forward. The black man was looking directly at me. His raised hand was holding the twobladed paddle over his head. He was going to bash me with it, and I couldn't possibly get to him with the knife. Crap.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
I started to submerge, thinking I might be able to swim away from my attacker. He held the paddle out toward me, and said, 'Give me a hand. The current is strong.'
'Who are you?'
'I'm Abraham Osceola. I can help you.'
I had no choice. If he had a gun, he would have shot me by now. If I pulled him closer, at least I'd have a better chance to knife him if he proved to be hostile.
I grabbed the paddle with one hand, holding on to the swim platform with the other. I pulled him over until he reached out and grabbed the stainless-steel handhold on the back of my boat.
'Thanks,' he said.
'What do you want?'
'Let's get into your boat, and I'll tell you a story.' He grinned.
His voice carried die lilt of the Bahamas, a pleasing dialect of English that reminded me of clear water and gentle breezes. I pulled up on the ladder and took the painter from the bow of his kayak, tying it to the cleat on the stern of my boat. He climbed up after me.
I had the knife in my hand as I backed up to give him room to get into the boat's cockpit. He was wearing only a loincloth. He looked at the blade, grinned again, and said, 'Not to worry. I'm a Seminole:'
Crap, I thought. Those guys from Florida State never give it a rest. 'I'm a Gator,' I said.
He looked at me, puzzled. Then he laughed. 'Ali,' he said, barely able to contain his mirth. 'The University of Florida. No, no. I'm a Seminole Indian. Part Tequesta, too. Let's get out of here.'
Feeling a bit foolish, I cranked the engine and idled away from Blood Island, the kayak rolling in the little wake left by my boat's movement.
'I don't understand,' I said. 'You're a black Bahamian.'
'I'm black, all right, but I'm a Seminole. And a Tequesta. Let me tell you my story.' And he did.
Back in the dim reaches of history, probably about the time of Christ, the Tequesta Indians moved into South Florida and settled in present-day Miami-Dade and Broward Counties and in the Keys. They were likely subservient to the more numerous Calusa who dominated the Lower Peninsula for hundreds of years. Historians think their language was a Muscogean dialect spoken by the other tribes in the area. The Creeks of Georgia and Alabama also spoke a language related to Muscogean.
When the Spanish came to Florida in the early sixteenth century, the Tequesta welcomed them to their villages along Biscayne Bay. For more than two centuries, the Spanish and Tequesta maintained a tenuous, but mostly peaceful, relationship. Then, in 1763, the Spanish ceded Florida to the British. Most of the remaining Tequesta asked for, and were given, transport to Havana.
A small number of the Indians fled to the Everglades and sustained themselves as hunter-gatherers. Over the next sixty years, their numbers dwindled until there were only a few Tequesta left, eking out a subsistence living in the swamps where no white man ventured.
During the latter half of the eighteenth century, before the British assumed control of Florida, a group of Creek Indians from Georgia and Alabama began to drift south. They allied themselves with the local tribes of North Florida, intermarried, and soon separated from the Creek Nation and became known as the Seminoles.
Beginning in the middle of the seventeenth century, the Spanish encouraged slaves from the southern states to flee to Florida. Those who were successful were considered free, and they set up their own communities. The Seminoles became their protectors, and there was intermarriage between the two groups.
The black former slaves, and a number of blacks that had been living in Florida as free people for generations, known as Maroons, began to think of themselves as Seminoles, and, indeed, many of them had Seminole blood.
History records few of the black Seminoles, but one who rose to prominence was named Abraham. He was probably an escaped slave from Pensacola, who had joined the Seminoles in North Florida in the early nineteenth century. He married the part-black ex-wife of Billy Bowlegs, the hereditary Seminole chief, and they had a daughter.
Abraham became the chief negotiator for the Seminoles in their dealings with the United States. When the Second Seminole War broke out in 1835, Abraham was found fighting with the band of Chief Osceola. Most of the warriors in this famous force were black, and they were among the fighters most feared by American soldiers.
Osceola himself was not a Seminole, but the son of an English trader and a Red Stick Creek woman. History does not record how he came to fight with the Seminoles, nor does it mention that Osceola took Abraham's daughter as his mistress. A son was born of that union, and he was named Abraham Osceola.
My companion had finished his history lesson. We were now far enough from Blood Island that no one would hear or see us.
Abraham had been reciting as if he were in a trance. Now, his regular tone of voice returned. 'I am descended from that son,' he said, and the Tequesta woman he married after the Seminoles retreated to the Everglades and absorbed the remaining Tequesta. Her father was the hereditary chief of the tribe. Later, at the end of the Second Seminole War, my ancestors and many other black Seminoles fled to the Bahamas. They did not want to be transported to Oklahoma. Who would?' He grinned.
'I'm happy to have learned something tonight,' I said, 'but how does this help me?'
'I grew up on the stories that form the oral traditions of my people, the Seminoles and the Tequesta. When I came to the States, I brought those traditions with me. I worked the fishing boats for many years, and now I'm retired. I'm almost eighty years old.'
That was a shock. He could have passed for fifty. He was a powerful man, with no flab about his body. He was paddling a kayak on the open sea at midnight. I nodded my head, signaling him to continue.
He said, 'What you call Blood Island was once a sacred place for die Tequesta. We called it by a different name, but even the name is sacred and can only be spoken to others of the tribe. They buried their caciques, or chiefs, there, and the warriors would often visit to commune with the spirits of those gone before. When I retired, I searched the islands of the Marquesas and Mule Keys. One day I found the burial grounds of my ancestors on Blood Island.
'I visited regularly, to pray with my ancestors, and to feel their spirits. One day, about three years ago, some rough men with rifles escorted me off the island and told me I'd be shot if I returned.
'I had to find a way on and off the island that would not alert the owners that I was there. The burial mound is on the northwest corner of the island, and there is a way to get in there by boat if you know how. I can show you.'
'Why would you do this?'
