“We row fast—hide—Sammy know place. Hide boat, hide engine, hide you and me, eh? Good thing. Bad man can’t find us. Sammy knows.”
I said to myself that it would be mighty lucky for us if Sammy did know, but there wasn’t a thing we could do but wait to find out.
The other boat wasn’t gaining any; but if our boat should sink, why, there would be an end of the whole thing. And she was getting fuller and fuller every minute. It seemed like an hour before we rounded the head of the island and were out of sight of the men who were chasing us; and then Sammy rowed faster than ever more than half the way to the other end, when, all of a sudden, he turned toward shore and rowed through a mess of weeds and little willows into a sort of bayou, all surrounded by swampy ground, but with a couple of big willows with droopy branches growing right at the edge of the water. Sammy made for one of these and pushed the boat right through the leaves. Mark and I almost hollered, we was so relieved, for back under that tree was plenty of room for the boat, and the growing things were so dense all around that no one could see them from the shore or from the bayou if they found their way in.
“F-f-fine,” says Mark; and he patted Sammy on the shoulder.
That tickled Sammy, and he grinned again as wide as before.
But being pleased with the place didn’t keep the water from coming through the bottom of the boat, and she was settling and settling. Sammy jumped out up to his knees and grabbed hold of the bow. It wasn’t any job at all to haul her up on the mud so she couldn’t sink any farther, and that part of it was all right. We noticed that Sammy didn’t take any more time about it than was necessary, and scrambled into the boat about as quick as he could. He sat down on the seat and grinned again. “Snakes,” he said, “lots of snakes—big. Go k-r-r-r-r-r.” He imitated a rattler as if he’d gone to a rattler school and learned their language.
Mark pulled his feet up and kept them on the seat; partly on account of the water slopping around in the boat, and partly because it made him feel easier in his mind, he said. He never did have any use for snakes—particularly rattlers. For that matter, neither did I.
It wasn’t very comfortable, but it was safe. Batten and Bill, most likely, would keep on chasing us down the river, at least for quite a piece. It wouldn’t occur to them that we had put in to the island until they got past the lower end of it themselves, and our boat was nowhere in sight. They might come back to look after that, but there didn’t seem very much danger of getting found, and more so when you think about the bad name the snakes and poison ivy had given the island.
In about five minutes we heard the sloshing of oars in the river outside, and Batten’s boat went splashing past hot-foot—if a boat can go hot-foot, seeing it hasn’t any feet, and if it had they’d be in cool water. Sammy chuckled and pointed and showed his big white teeth in the middle of a grin.
“Good place to hide, eh? Bad men go past quick, so. Sammy fool ’em; nobody find Sammy when Sammy hide—no.”