“Dick this is a pretty wild spot, isn’t it?”
“Well, I should say so, Leo; and not only wild, but dangerous, as well.”
“Dangerous? Why, you are not afraid of the ’gators, are you?”
“Not exactly; but then there are other things besides alligators to look out for in this region.”
The two speakers were young men, eighteen or nineteen years of age.
They were seated upon the trunk of a fallen tree, on a small island, situated at the lower end of Lake Okechobee, Florida.
A few feet from them a negro lad was busily engaged in cooking a haunch of meat over a brightly burning fire.
The first speaker was Leo Malvern, the son of a wealthy St. Augustine merchant, and his companion was his cousin, Dick Vincey, of New York City.
Dick had come to the South to spend the fall and winter with his relatives, and his cousin had proposed that the two should make a trip as far as the Everglades.
Both liked adventure, and the idea of penetrating into that unexplored region pleased them to a great extent.