The canoes and cargoes arrived at Osceola’s late in the afternoon, and Ned and Dick saw their second Seminole camp.  It was the best camp in the Everglades, as Osceola himself was perhaps the best specimen of the Florida Seminole.

The three buildings which constituted the camp consisted merely of high roofs, beautifully constructed of palmetto, which came within four feet of the ground at their outer edges.  Below this they were entirely open.  These buildings were nearly filled with tables, about four feet high, on which the Indians slept at night and occupied as a floor during the day.  The buildings were placed about a round shed, under which the cooking for the whole camp was done.  The fire was built in the usual Seminole fashion.  Logs of wood were arranged like the spokes of a wheel, and the fire built at the hub.  When the cooking was finished the logs were drawn back a few inches and the fire went down to coals, but continued to smolder.  When the logs were brought together again the fire blazed up.

Ned and Johnny made their bed on one of the tables and slept well, but they kicked at dipping their hands in the family stew, and broiled their venison and made their coffee over the common fire.  It was a good-natured camp, but the boys made life a burden to the Indians for two days by their incessant attempts at conversation in the Indian tongue.  Some of the old Indians were sociable, and the boys got along very well with them, but the younger ones were shy and refused to talk until, having put on the white man’s clothes that Ned had given him, Tommy took several of the young squaws and pickaninnies out in an Indian canoe.  The young Indians laughed so much at Tommy that they began to forget their shyness, and when Tommy bought for Ned a bright-colored Indian shirt that a squaw had just made and the boy put it on, the Indians gathered around him and made fun, very much as white children would have done.  One of the squaws brought him a red handkerchief, such as many of the Indians wore, and when Ned nodded and tied it around his neck they all laughed.  Another squaw motioned at Ned’s hat, and then at several Indians who were bareheaded.  Ned nodded again and tossed his hat aside.  Then as a squaw pointed at his trousers and afterwards at the bare-legged Indians about him, Ned shook his head vigorously, and even the older Indians joined in the laughter.

The children of the camp were shy things, and peeped out at the strangers from behind trees and out of hiding-places, but Dick was fond of all wild creatures and few of them could resist his friendly advances.  Soon every pickaninny in the place was tagging after him.  The older ones took him out in canoes, which soon were capsized, and all hands swam back, each accusing the other of having upset the craft.