[CHAPTER XI.
AZURMA’S SEARCH.]
Dick Vincey gave an agonizing cry as he saw his cousin disappear in the flame and smoke below them.
“He’s lost—he’s lost!” he almost wailed. “What will his parents say when I return without him?”
“It’s too bad,” said Martin Haypole, consolingly, “but I wouldn’t take on so much, if I was you. You know none of us won’t ever git back ter home, anyway—we have took our oaths that we won’t never leave this dod-rotted country.”
“Come,” remarked the professor, “let us get away from this place. Leo is dead long before this—no earthly power could save him.”
“You are right,” assented Andrew Jones. “I am sorry, but it can’t be helped.”
“There is a possibility of his having passed through the flame and smoke alive,” said De Amilo, the Spaniard; “but the rushing stream—if he is not drowned in that, he will be carried over a falls a few hunderd yards further down, and be dashed to pieces on the rocks.”
No one in the party had the least doubt but that Leo Malvern was dead, and with a feeling of sorrow they turned from the spot and started for the village.
“May de good Lor’ save him!” whined Lucky, the darky, wringing his hands. “Massa Leo was de bestest friend dis poor darky eber had, an’ now him done gone an’ got killed. Oh, why did us eber come to de Eberglades, anyhow?”
“It is my fault,” said Prof. Easy; “I had no business to induce him to accompany me on my exploring tour. We have made many discoveries, but this fearful accident spoils all the pleasure there is in it.”