For the rest of that afternoon they slept no more, but kept on the lookout for dangerous shallows. The raft did not ground again, but once it went over a submerged snag with a grinding jar that set all the bees rushing out. The collision might have ripped the bottom out of a boat, but the raft was unsinkable.
The sun went down over the swamps, and Sam lighted the fire again on the bed of sand and prepared supper. Mosquitoes began to be bad; a cool dampness, full of the smell of rotting vegetation, rose from the water. But it did not look as if there was going to be any fog that night, and they were determined to keep on as long as they could see. It could not be many miles, Joe thought, to their destination.
So they kept on through the twilight. It was almost dark when the raft went round a bend, and, carried by the shoot of the cross-current, went straight for the other shore, where a long peninsula extended, piled with a rick of dead drift-timber.
“Steer her! Fend off!” Joe shouted, but the momentum was too great. Nor would the poles touch bottom, and the raft ran heavily into something, recoiled, and swung sideways into the mass of fallen trees. There was a tremendous rending and crashing, and for a moment the heavy craft seemed likely to sweep the obstruction away. Then it slackened, the snapping of twigs ceased. The raft stood motionless, with the river current surging under its timbers. There was a great roaring from the troubled bees.
“Hung up for sure!” said Bob, peering through the twilight at the tangle of dead branches. “We’ll have to chop and saw all that stuff clear. It’ll be an all-night job.”
They were close to the shore, and mosquitoes began to swarm out in vicious hordes. Slapping at the pests, the boys in perplexity tried to examine the trap they were in by the light of splinters of blazing pine.
“I vote we go ashore somewhere and camp,” Joe suggested. “We can’t do this job in the dark. The mosquitoes’ll eat us alive if we stay here all night, and we might get a dose of chills and fever besides. Let’s go back to high ground.”
“Think it’s safe?” Bob asked, doubtfully.
“Of course. The raft can’t get loose, and nobody is going to touch it. We must be far out of Blue Bob’s range now. We’d have seen him before if he’d been after us.”
The others were willing to be persuaded, and they put the blankets and guns into the boat and went ashore. It was hard to find a spot dry enough to land. They got involved in a swamp, groped through fifty yards of mud and jungle, and came at last to rising “hammock-land.” A hundred yards further the ground was still higher, and a bare, open space seemed to promise comparative freedom from mosquitoes. It was so warm that they needed no fire; they spread their blankets on the bare ground and went promptly asleep.