"This is an awful hole," was the lad's conclusion. "I don't think I should care to be lost in this swamp. If the Dismal Swamp is any worse, excuse me, as Ichabod would say."
Palmettos he found growing thickly in places above the black ooze of the swamp, bushes of varieties that he did not know covered the ground thickly in places, while vines and creepers climbed the trunks of the trees, hanging in trailing festoons from the branches. Coon and possum were plentiful, but he did not see any of them.
Most interesting to Tad were the swamp rabbits. These lived mostly in the depths of the woods and beside the lonely bayous. These rabbits, he discovered to his amazement, could swim and dive like muskrats, being as much at home in the water as on the land. Tad never had heard of them before and he watched the antics of some of the little fellows curiously. While Tad moved about with caution, he was unafraid. His love of nature was too great to permit him to be afraid of it; even though he knew that at any second he might tread on a deadly reptile, so he strode on with the light, noiseless step of the experienced hunter and woodsman. Here and there Tad would strike a blaze on a cypress with his axe. He did not propose to be lost in this forest.
The sound of the camp horn calling to him warned the boy that he had strayed a long distance from camp. He answered the call by shooting his revolver three times in the air, to which the horn responded by two toots.
These horns were used by nearly everyone in the brake. Each person was supposed to carry a horn with him, the horn being useful not alone in calling the dogs, but in signaling positions to each other, and its notes could be heard a long distance in clear weather.
The boy discovered from the direction of the sound that he had made a wide detour to reach his present position. However, instead of trying to take a direct course back to the camp, as an inexperienced person might have done, the Pony Rider Boy cautiously followed his trail back, never for a moment losing sight of his blazes on the cypress trees. It was more than an hour later when he strolled into camp, the guide having blown the horn several times, which Tad had not answered after the first time.
"Look here, young man, where have you been?" demanded Lilly.
"I have been tramping. I went over to a round lake a good distance from here."
"A lake?"
"Yes, sir."