“Must be somewhere between here and the neck,” Qualley said; “there is no possible way out unless they found a boat. I never heard of any one going through that swamp.”
“Not a chance,” Roberts exclaimed with rising spirits, “we’ll get ’em yet.”
The trail was plain enough on the open beach, but it had them worried a little when it turned back into the edge of the forest. It looked as though they might have changed their minds and decided to circle back to the west.
“Wonder if something scared them out?” Roberts asked anxiously, as they searched for the trail in the forest. The anxiety was of short duration, for they soon picked up some tracks in the palmetto scrub and when they had learned its general direction they had no trouble in following the trail.
Qualley guessed the reason for the digression into the forest pretty closely. “Thought they would be less conspicuous in here and might lose us for a while,” he explained. “It would have worked all right last night and caused us considerable delay, at least if we had been hard on their trail as they probably thought we were. Rather clever of them. They make it a little hard for us yet.”
But Roberts was not to be discouraged. He had been down in the dumps a short time before and could see nothing ahead of him but an uncomfortable cell in the penitentiary or an almost equally unpleasant life in a dismal hiding place; now he felt sure of his prey and was in a triumphant mood.
“I would not give them much for their chances,” he retorted grimly, and hastened his pace on the uncertain trail. “In half an hour our worries will be over.”
And it certainly looked as though he was right, for the palmetto scrub had given way to a stretch of open sand and the trail lay clear before them, leading straight to the sleeping men on the beach less than a quarter of a mile away.
CHAPTER XVII
Scott awoke in the morning with the sun shining full in his face. He had been so dead to the world that it was hard for him to realize where he was and how he came to be sleeping on the open beach with the waves of the rising tide lapping the sands within a few feet of him. Suddenly the events of the night before came to him and a feeling of horror crept over him when he realized what a risk they had run by exposing themselves in that way right in the enemy’s country.