“Hyar—hyar he goes!” he heard Blue Bob bellowing. “Git pine splinters! Make a blaze, d—n you! He can’t git fur!”
Lockwood tried to sight the small canoe that usually trailed beside the house boat. He had counted on it, but nothing was visible. If he could secure it—but there was no use looking. Even the house boat was a mere blur of blackness. He crawled forward into the gloom and, getting into deeper water, began to swim with a long, noiseless stroke.
He was a good swimmer, and was practically stripped but for his trousers. Leaves, branches rustled over his head. He had come to the screened mouth of the bayou. He strove to push through without sound, but some snapping branch must have betrayed him. A perfect volley of shots were fired at him, ripping the leaves, driving up the water, but not one of them touched him. Careless of noise now, he struck out strongly and went through, and felt the powerful pull of the big river current outside.
CHAPTER XV
THE FOG
Back in the bayou was an uproar. Fat pine torches were flaming, so that the whole foggy place seemed a great glow; and then he heard the splash of paddles and saw something like a spot of lighted haze coming out. It was the canoe. He stopped swimming and floated soundlessly. He struck something—a half-submerged snag, and clung to it. The canoe dashed nearer, without outlines, a moving blur of light; and he ducked completely under, holding his breath.
It passed so close that the glare of the torches shone on his eyes through the water. But for the fog he would certainly have been detected. The blur faded. He put his eyes and nose up. The boat was circling away downstream, and a shot blazed suddenly from it, probably at a drifting log. The pirates were taking a chance at anything. Lockwood let go and floated again. The canoe came about and sped upriver. He could hear the talking, clear through the thick, wet air.
“I’m sure he’s hit. I saw him plain one minute.”
“Ef he ain’t drowned or dead, we’ll find him wounded on the bank somewhere in the mornin’.”
“Not a particle of use lookin’ in this yere fog.”
They kept on searching, however, going some distance up, and then down again close to the shore. Lockwood risked swimming again, heading out into mid-river. The twist and shift of the currents bothered him. They seemed to set in all directions, and he lost track of which way he was going.