“There is only one man in the boat,” remarked Thad, a little anxiously; “and as he’s coming about over the course we did, I wonder now if it could be any messenger sent after us by that telegraph agent at the town?”
“Oh!” gasped Smithy.
Instantly every fellow felt a queer sensation pass over him. The words uttered by Thad had conjured up all sorts of grave possibilities as connected with their various happy homes away up North; and doubtless they suffered tortures from that moment on.
Straight for the camp came the solitary paddler. He was seated in a roomy boat built after the prevailing type used around the neighborhood of the swamp, and from the dexterity with which he handled the paddle it was plain that he must be quite at home on the water.
“Hello! boys, I’m comin’ ashore tuh jine yuh!” he called out; perhaps being a little dubious as to what sort of reception they were calculating on giving him; for the display of guns and hatchets and knives must have looked ominous indeed.
“All right, come along then!” Thad sang out in reply.
Two minutes later and the stranger’s boat was drawn up on the sloping bank, and he strode toward the fire. Then the eager boys saw that he had a genial if wrinkled, sun-burned face, and a scraggy gray beard.
“I’m Alligator Smith,” he announced, just as though that name might be known in all that section well enough to explain everything; and it was, too, for the reader may remember that it was this very man whom Thad had once wished he could come upon to try and engage him as a guide.
Here was luck with a capital L. Thad immediately offered the other his hand.
“Glad to meet up with you, Mr. Smith,” he said; “here’s a namesake of yours with us, though we call him plain Smithy; and this next Boy Scout is Allan Hollister; the stout chap Bumpus Hawtree,” and so he went on, introducing each chum, while the angular native proceeded to shake hands with them in rotation.