“There’s something pretty strong around here, and that’s a fact,” spoke up Giraffe as he changed his seat. “I wonder, now, if the decaying vegetation in these here old Louisiana swamps always tone up the air like that. Smells to me kind of like rank onions that have got past the useful and respectable stage. I can see how we’re bound to have a high old time if this is a specimen of swamp air, and we expect to breathe it for mebbe two whole weeks.”
“Oh! say, that ain’t hardly fair!” remarked Davy Jones; “alaying it all on the poor old swamp, when, honest Injun, I’ve been asniffing that same queer odor all day.”
He looked straight and hard at Bumpus as he said this. The fat scout immediately frowned as though he felt hurt.
“I know what you’re ahinting at, Davy Jones,” he remarked, hotly; “just because I choose to continue wearing my old suit, and keep the new one for another day you like to make out this outfit ain’t all right. I admit she looks a mite greasy, because I’ve helped cook many a fine meal while wearing the same. There’s associations wrapped up with every inch of this faded cloth, and you can laugh all you want to, but I decline to throw it away while on this trip. What’s a swamp but a muddy hole, and I don’t choose to spoil my brand new suit, if you do. Besides, Step Hen and me, we’ve got such stuffy colds in our heads we can’t smell a single thing.”
“Then for goodness sake, change places with me, and be a chum of Step Hen’s during the remainder of this whole trip. Besides,” added Giraffe, as he saw Bumpus getting as red as a turkey gobbler with indignation, “it’ll balance the two boats better, I’m thinking. How about that, Mr. Scout-master?”
“I was figuring that we could do better than we have so far; and if Bumpus is willing to change with you, let him,” replied Thad. “That will bring him in my boat with Davy and Step Hen. They say colds like that are catching, so perhaps both Davy and myself will soon have one.”
“Huh! I hope so,” muttered the Jones boy, sniffing the air suspiciously when poor Bumpus happened to move to windward of him; but the usually good-natured fat boy pretended not to notice the slur.
“Well, as we’re all through lunch, let’s make a start, for we expect to be deep in Alligator swamp long before night comes on,” said Allan, who had the second paddling boat, fashioned somewhat after the pattern of the old-fashioned dug-out canoe made from a log, in his charge, being the assistant patrol leader of the Silver Fox band.
Ten minutes later, and having packed all their stuff away, the boys were ready to continue their journey into the depths of the thickening wilderness where the hanging Spanish moss that draped the trees proved such a strange sight to them all, and gave such a graveyard look to their surroundings that more than one of them felt a little shiver of apprehension, as though they fancied all manner of mysteries must presently arise to confront them.
The boat containing Giraffe, Allan, Bob White and Smithy happened to be ahead when they came to where their progress was hindered somewhat by floating logs and other stuff; so Giraffe, without being told to do the same, stood up in the bow to punch his way clear. He made a vicious stab at what he thought was a floating log, but had no sooner struck his paddle against it than the seemingly harmless object made a sudden lunge, splashed water all over the boat, and disappeared from sight; while the astonished boy, losing his balance as his paddle slipped off the scaly armor of the old mossback alligator that had been sleeping so placidly on the surface of the lagoon that it had not noticed their approach, fell in with a tremendous splurge.