Part 3 (2/2)

They did stop and drift, however, when they caught sight of a large animal swimming across their path about two hundred yards ahead. The boys grabbed their guns, but knew better than to waste bird shot on such big game. They merely watched the swimming creature in some alarm until it disappeared in the flooded forest. Hubert was sure it was a panther, but Ted said it might be only a lynx, perhaps even only the lesser lynx, commonly called the wild-cat. In any case, he thought, it was better to ”let it go” and not ”try to stir up a fight,” armed as they were with mere bird-guns.

While they discussed the matter, drifting, Hubert unwound a fis.h.i.+ng line he took out of his pocket. It was provided with a fly which had seen service in North Carolina trout streams, and he threw it as far out as he could. To his astonishment it was taken almost immediately and he found himself pulling a large and game fish toward the boat. When finally lifted over the boat's side, it proved to be a black ba.s.s weighing about five pounds. Both boys were now eager for more such sport, but Ted resisted the temptation and dipped his paddle vigorously.

”We've got to get somewhere before night,” he said, looking at the declining sun. ”Maybe we can come back here some time and try 'em again.”

At the farther end of the lake the boat-road began again and wound on its way as before through seemingly endless flood and forest. At many points they found it more difficult to force the boat forward, but the scenery was the same. Now a long winding reach of black or wine-colored lagoon bordered by trees standing knee-deep in the flood and flying a thousand ragged flags of gray moss; now a tortuous trail among the crowding trunks of both standing and fallen trees, among ma.s.ses of reeds full of the drift of fallen branches, beneath low-hanging boughs dipping their finger-like leaf.a.ge into the water, and tangles of vines trailing down to the very surface of dark still pools. Then more and more of the thin-leafed cypresses towering on high with some of their banyan-like ”knees” rising from the wine-colored flood a dozen feet from the parent stem, and others lying in wait a few inches below the surface, less perilous to the swamp boat than a sunken reef to the ocean s.h.i.+p, yet the most stubborn of all snags and the source of much labor and delay.

By the time the boys had laboriously got clear of the third ”knee” upon which their boat had stalled, and had paddled, polled and pushed altogether three or four miles, the sun was down and they found it necessary to prepare for the night.

”I _said_ we ought to stay on that island,” complained Hubert, as he looked around into the darkening aisles of the flooded forest.

”Well, I didn't want to be a prisoner there if you did,” retorted Ted.

They bailed out what water had leaked into the bateau, broke brush and gathered moss for their bed, then ate an insufficient portion of broiled turkey which they had the forethought to bring with them. They felt safer in their boat, adrift in a tree-bordered lagoon, even if dark, mysterious foliage did overhang them. Perhaps this was why Hubert, after they had lain down and covered themselves with moss, permitted himself to refer sarcastically to Ted's prediction of the night before.

”I thought you were to be out of the swamp or get to the slackers' camp by to-night,” he observed, with a yawn.

”Oh, give me another day, can't you!” retorted Ted, and, turning over, he fell asleep.

They were still asleep when the dawn came down and, in slow, wondrous miracle, transformed the thick darkness of the swamp into light. The wood-thrush lifted its sweet voice in welcome of the new day, and a lovely calm seemed to rest upon the great Okefinokee.

But the heavenly peace of morning was not everywhere, for directly above the sleeping boys, close upon a limb of the tree under which their drifting boat had come to rest, crouched a beast which looked down upon them with a fixed, dilating stare of hate. The animal was of a grayish brown that went pale along its belly. Its body looked long yet was short in proportion to the length of its powerful legs. It had a round head and face, pointed ears, yellow-green eyes and whitish-brown whiskers.

Its tail was a mere thick brown stump that stood up stiffly when it moved an inch or two as if to get a better look, sinking its razor-edged claws deep into the green bark.

The watching lynx longed fiercely to drop upon Ted's neck, so soft and red and helpless, but was held motionless by its fear of the most terrible of all its enemies--mysterious, wonderful man. Nevertheless, seeing needed food, the beast obeyed an impulse stronger than fear and leaped, alighting, not upon Ted, but upon the black ba.s.s at the foot of the couch of broken boughs.

The boat rocked. The boys started up, blinking. The lynx growled fiercely, its teeth fastened in its prey. And then, after another and mightier leap, which rocked the boat still more, it became a mere shadow in the brush on their right, and was gone.

Shouting, questioning, gesticulating, and almost losing their balance, the boys sat down quickly in fear of upsetting the bateau.

”What is it?” cried Hubert. ”It got my fis.h.!.+”

”A wild-cat maybe,” said Ted, ”but it seemed bigger than I thought they were and I didn't know they had a stumpy tail.”

”It had fierce whiskers just like the Kaiser's,” a.s.serted Hubert. ”Look here, Ted,” he added solemnly, ”we've got to get out of this place or something will eat us up.”

Then Ted began to laugh. And as there was nothing else to be done, there being no food, they picked up their paddles and started, breakfastless, on their way.

Several hours later they emerged from the flooded forest and saw before them an extensive open marsh filled with long rushes, ”bonnets,” and open pools, and dotted with small islands, the trees of which were hung with long gray drifts of Spanish moss. As far as the eye could reach, straight ahead, to the right or to the left, nothing else was visible.

With increasing weariness and hunger the boys paddled and poled about this marsh until late in the day, imagining that they were pursuing the same general course, but in reality wandering widely in the confusion of rounding the many islets. At last, in the late afternoon, they saw far ahead the green tops of some tall pines and gradually worked their way toward them, surmising that they stood either upon a large island or the mainland. As they approached within half a mile, a shallow marsh, free of the confusing islets, opened before them. In the shallower water here the rushes and water-mosses seemed to thicken steadily as they neared the sh.o.r.e, and it became more and more difficult to force the bateau through or over them, although the boys now followed the windings of a clearly-defined boat-trail.

Finally, within some three hundred yards of the sh.o.r.e or the wall of woods indicating an island, they were compelled to step out and drag the boat after them, sinking now to the knee, now to the waist, in slimy moss, mud and water. Entering the border of trees, they pushed forward, still in water knee-deep, for about a hundred yards, before they reached a landing-place where two boats, somewhat larger than their own, were moored.

”There's somebody here, _sure_,” said Ted, looking about hopefully.

A well-beaten path led upward through the dense ”hammock” between the swamp proper and the pine ridge composing the island upon which the boys had landed. Under magnolia and bay trees and through tall underbrush of swamp-cane the path led to the top of the slope, where, some two hundred yards from the boats, the boys found themselves in a small clearing, beyond which the open pine land of the island stretched away monotonously.

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