On one of his marketing excursions Ned saw a skiff containing two men about a quarter of a mile distant. He waved his hat to the men and paddled toward them, but they rowed away. He followed, but was unable to find them, and concluded that they were outlaws, who did not care to extend their acquaintance. After this he paddled about on the lookout for some one who might help him to carry Dick to the outside world, for he had given up the idea of attempting it by himself.
CHAPTER XXI
CONVALESCENCE AND CATASTROPHE
Ned's hopes and plans were suddenly changed, and he no longer hoped for help, but planned to take Dick to the coast himself. For Dick was getting well. There was no doubt about it. His appetite came back, until, instead of urging him to eat, Ned waited for him to ask twice for food before giving it to him. He was still thin and weak, but his spirits bubbled over, and his laughter was on tap, ready to be turned on any minute. He began to clamor for a move toward the coast, but Ned was obdurate and refused to stir for a week. Then one day Ned started out and paddled some miles toward the coast, examining the shores of the keys and the mangrove-lined banks of the salt-water rivers for a camping-ground. He could have made his own camp on the overflowed meadows almost anywhere, but Dick was still an invalid and Ned was always anxious about him. Six miles from the camp, where he had left Dick with Tom, Ned found a good camping site, marked by a freak palmetto with a trunk that branched into two stems about midway up. The ground was covered with palmetto scrub, which Ned examined carefully for rattlesnakes, after which he got out his fly-rod and caught a mess of fish for supper. On his return to camp the lynx sprang into the canoe, seized one of the fish and growled so fiercely that Ned thought best to let him keep it.
"Fresh water is all out, Dick," said Ned that night, "so I'll start at daylight and go back to the river and fill up. I'll take it slowly and be here about noon. Then we can start out and make easy work of being in the new camp long before sun-down."
"Ned, I can paddle all right, and I'm going to help. I am sick of being a baby."
"Go 'way, chile, you make me tired. Don't forget that I'm your doctor," replied Ned.
"Do you see any chance of getting to the coast?"