While saying this he was pushing her up to me, at the same time holding out a bag, or kind of traveling case, that she had dropped. I seized it with one hand, and her arm with the other.
"Quick; go to camp," Smilax was saying. "Me get Echochee and give 'em chase up coast. Be back soon; you wait there."
He had taken to the water again and was making for the Indian woman, who I thought had started out to meet him. So I knew he would rescue her, as surely as he was six and a half feet of muscle and endurance. The camp had become thoroughly aroused by now, and lights were everywhere. Hoping to reassure Sylvia, I whispered as Smilax would have spoken:
"Me friend; come quick!"
Above the confusion we could hear the voice of Efaw Kotee bellowing:
"Get the punts, you fools! Which way is she?"
"On the mainland," someone yelled.
"Then catch her," he bellowed again, with a string of blasphemous oaths.
This decided her, and she whispered wildly:
"Hurry! Take me where Tachachobee said!"