There was something in the expression of his face as he stared downstream that made me even more uneasy than before.
"Not so! The niggers will see us in the open and end us there and then," interposed Matterson. "Moreover, unless the place has changed with the times, there's a town a scant three miles ahead."
"Belike 'twas only a serpent," O'Hara doggedly repeated, "but 'tis no place for us here. Let us fare on just half a mile up stream t'other side the river, in the mouth of the little creek that makes in there, and, me lads, let us get there quickly."
As we once more began to row, I was confident that O'Hara's talk of a great serpent was poppy-cock for us and for Uncle Seth, and that in any case neither Gleazen nor Matterson nor O'Hara cared a straw about a serpent half a mile away. At the time I would have given much to know just what shrewd guess they had made at the cause of that strange crackling; but they dismissed the subject absolutely, which probably was as well for all concerned; and refusing to speak of it again, they urged Abe and me to our rowing until at their direction we bore across the current and slipped through the trailing branches of the trees, and through the thick bushes and dangling vines, into the well-hidden mouth of a little creek.
By then the sun was shining hotly and I was glad enough to lean on my oar and get my breath.
All that day we lay in the thick vegetation of the creek, which to a certain extent shielded us from the sun, although the warm, damp air became almost unendurable. Much of the time we slept, but always one or another of us was posted as a guard, and at high noon an alarm called us to our weapons.
O'Hara, who happened to be standing watch, woke us without a sound, one after another, by touching us with his hand.
For a while we saw only the great trees, the sluggish creek, the slow river, and the interwoven vines; then we heard voices, and into our sight there swept a long canoe manned by naked negroes, who swung their paddles strongly and went racing past us down the river.
How, I wondered, had O'Hara known that they were coming? Human ears could not have heard their voices as far away as they must have been when he woke us.