“Blue Bob! Oh, lordy! Now we’s sure ’nuff cotched!” Sam groaned.
“Hush!” Joe whispered, with a savage glance.
The boys crouched on the raft, scarcely daring to breathe, for their slowly-moving craft still blocked the mouth of the bayou. But fortunately the pirates’ boat was not so near as they imagined. Sound carries clear and far through fog, and the gray mist lay like a blanket on the water. The boys could not see from one end of the raft to the other; and they did not know for certain whether they were actually out until the raft began to show a brisker activity and to swing ponderously round in the Alabama current.
“What’s that?” said a voice that sounded scarce twenty feet distant. “I see somethin’ movin’ yander.”
The oars stopped. A faint blur showed through the fog. Joe noiselessly cocked his little rifle.
“Timber raft!” Blue Bob declared. “Blackburn’s gang has been raftin’ logs all the week down ter Mobile. I kin see it right plain.”
“Well, that’s what you reckon. I want to go an’ make shore,” returned another voice.
“Aw, shucks!” retorted the chief. “Nothin’ but a gang of river niggers aboard. We’ve got too heavy a load here to row back against this current.”
The stroke of the oars began again. The boat seemed to pass within a stone’s toss of the end of the raft, and the sound of rowing grew fainter up the bayou.
“Safe!” Bob ventured to whisper, after silence had fallen.