"There, professor!" cried Frank; "that settles it!"
"As I knew it would be settled," growled Professor Scotch, sulkily. "You boys combine against me every time. Well, I suppose I'll have to submit."
So the trio pushed on still farther into the great Dismal Swamp, a weird section of strange vegetable and animal life, where great black trees stood silent and grim, with Spanish moss dangling from their branches, bright-plumaged birds flashed across the opens, ugly snakes glided sinuously over the boggy land, and sleepy alligators slid from muddy banks and disappeared beneath the surface of the dead water.
The professor continued to grumble.
"If we should come upon one of these wonderful golden herons, Frank could not come within a hundred yards of it with that old bow and arrow," he said.
"Couldn't I?" retorted Frank. "Perhaps not, but I could make a bluff at it."
"I don't see why you won't use a gun."
"Well, there are two reasons. In the first place, in order to be sure of killing a heron with a shotgun I'd have to use fairly large shot, and that might injure the bird badly; in the second place, there might be two, and I'd not be able to bag more than one of them with a gun, as the report would scare the other. Then there is the possibility that I would miss with the first shot, and the heron would escape entirely. If I miss with an arrow, it is not likely the bird will be alarmed and take to flight, so I'll have another chance at it. Oh, there are some advantages in using the primitive bow and arrow."
"Bosh!" exploded Scotch. "You have a way of always making out a good case for yourself. You won't be beaten."
"Begobs! he is a hard b'y to bate, profissor," grinned Barney. "Av he wurn't, it's dead he'd been long ago."