Bobby O’Malley: And the Spirit of the Conch Shell

By John Jacobs

In the book Little Bobby OMalley, the reader learned
of how Bobby saved the life of a young Seminole Indian
boy named Tenatke-Yaha (Thunder Wolf ), and how that
boy, whom Bobby would later call Thunder, became his
best friend.

Bobby saved Thunder from a panther, so the people of his
village gave Bobby the name of Hakla-Kowechobe, which
means (The Boy Who) Talks to the Panther.

A year after meeting Bobby, Thunders tribe decided to move
deep into the Everglades to escape the rapidly growing world
of the white man.

This book begins with Bobbys search for new adventures,
and introduces a girl who becomes his new best friend.
When his new friend comes into danger, Bobby and his dog,
Bandit, must risk their lives in a trek to seek help from the
spirit of the conch shell.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: May 7, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491733158

John Jacobs

John Jacobs has been a traveller since the age of eight years. After dropping out of university he spent two and a half years backpacking around the world, working in an iron ore mine in Australia and a farm in Manitoba. Returning to England he gained a qualification as an electronic engineer. Often travelling to places in the throes of disaster or conflict to assist UN and aid organisations with their communications. He has been to more than 85 countries; always interested in people and with an eye for the humorous and bizarre. In this book, he recounts having been shot at in Zaire, enjoying generous hospitality in Kazakhstan, being propositioned in Liberia, working with Kosova Albanians after the attempted Serb ‘ethnic cleansing’, nearly freezing to death in Israel and visiting Libya during the Arab Spring. He is a subject matter expert in High Frequency radio communications and has written a technical handbook on the subject.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Bobby’s New Discovery

Bobby missed his monthly week-end visits to Thunder’s village after his tribe moved deep into the Everglades, but not making those long hikes gave Bobby more time to pursue other interests and adventures.

During the months from September to early November, when the weather in Southeast Florida was still hot, Bobby took most of his walks to the beach, exploring along the shoreline north of Dania Beach with his dog, Bandit. There was no road north of Dania’s public beach. Other than on the rare occasion when Bobby would see a beach buggy filled with screaming teenagers go flying over the sand dunes, that stretch of beach was void of people, their noise, and their trash.

On the west side of the sandy beach, coconut and sea grape trees and a thick underbrush of tropical plants stretched north for miles from the end of the public beach to the shipping channel at Port Everglades. This area was safe from the beach buggies, and people did not venture there for the fear of snakes, and other dangerous creatures. Even alligators may have lived there twenty years earlier, but when the dredging of a channel connecting the fresh water Lake Mabel to the Atlantic Ocean was completed in 1930 to create Port Everglades, the waterways close to the ocean became too salty for alligators. Bobby loved exploring that area. He could imagine he was living during any period in history, even before the arrival of the first Spanish explorers.

That line of thick tropical vegetation along the beach was only about a hundred yards wide. It ended at Snake Creek, a shallow waterway that branched off of the Intracoastal Waterway just north of Dania Beach and snaked its way northward, re-entering the Intracoastal Waterway just south of Port Everglades. On the east side of Snake Creek, the sandy bank sloped upward to the higher elevated vegetation. On the west side, there was no sandy bank, only the roots of mangrove trees growing out into the creek from the swamp beyond.

Bobby was anxious to try to enter that dark, challenging terrain. Snake Creek was too shallow for any boats to pass through, and the only way to enter the mangrove swamp was to wade across, through the dark water, and climb over and through the mangrove roots. Bobby was excited to think that he may be the first person to set foot on that land for years; maybe ever!

Are you ready to go, Bandit? Bobby asked, as he stared at the forbidding, tangled roots of the mangrove trees. Bobby wasn’t sure whether Bandit’s response was a whine of excitement or one of foreboding, but his wagging tail told Bobby that he would follow him anywhere.

With an incoming tide, the current flows southward down the creek, but it was high tide as Bobby began wading into the murky creek so there was no current. About half way across, the water almost reached Bobby’s chin, and he wondered if he would be able to walk all the way to the other side. He took another couple of steps before his feet suddenly sank into the sandy mud at the bottom. Each time he tried to lift one foot up, the other sank deeper into the muddy sand below. In an instant, his head sank below the surface of the water. His nose was only about five inches below the surface but it might as well have been five feet; he could not breathe. A terrible fear came over Bobby as he realized that he was going to drown. In a few hours, the current would flow back northward as the tide went out, and the water would drop below where his head was now struggling to reach the surface… but of course that would be too late.

Bobby thought about how Bandit would lead his parents to him, but they too would arrive too late. He was already feeling the suffocating pain of not being able to breathe and he hoped it would end quickly, when he felt Bandit’s body in front of his face. Bobby knew Bandit wanted to save him, so he held onto Bandit’s shoulders as his loyal dog paddled with all his strength to lift Bobby from the murky depths of the creek. Bobby knew he was pulling Bandit down and feared he would drown Bandit also… so he let go of him. Bobby did not know that Bandit would rather die with him than leave him to die alone. Bandit pawed at Bobby’s arms and licked his face until Bobby realized that Bandit was not going to leave him, so he held on once more. He was ready to let go of him again, but Bandit’s desperate paddling provided just enough upward thrust to allow Bobby to free one foot. Bobby kicked the water hard with his freed leg until he was slowly able to free his other foot. When they reached the other side