“If you had taken a shot at her it might have been more than a hundred years before you would have eaten again,” Scott retorted in disgust. He could not understand how a man could look at such a sight as that and think only of shooting. “There is no telling how close we may be to that bunch.”
They had covered about three miles when the pine woods ended abruptly at a little creek and beyond it was a black and forbidding swamp. The undergrowth was dense and tangled and under it they could catch the gleam of the moonlight in the water.
“Gee!” Murphy exclaimed, “I’d hate to tackle that place in the dark. Looks as though it might be a pretty hopeless proposition even in the daytime.”
The prospect was, indeed, discouraging. They had no idea how wide the swamp might be or how deep the water might be in parts of it. Some of those swamps were easy wading, not more than three feet deep, but in others there was as much as ten or twelve feet of water. Scott sized it up as best he could and came to the conclusion that a passage through it at night would be impossible and he doubted very much if the daylight would be a very big help.
He glanced thoughtfully out across the calm and shining waters of the bay. “How far can you swim, Murphy?” he asked suddenly.
“Quite a ways down if the water is deep enough,” Murphy retorted, “but I don’t make much progress ahead.”
“Can’t you swim at all?” Scott asked incredulously.
“No more than a stone. Why, were you thinking of swimming to town?”
“No, not quite that, but I was wondering how far it was to that lighthouse out there. Maybe we could get a boat from them.”
Murphy looked at the winking light in dismay. “Well, it’s pretty hard to judge distance across the water, but I should say that light was at least four or five miles out. No, it would be considerably quicker for me to wait till to-morrow night when those fellows will have left for their retreat in the swamp.”