“We didn’t leave much honey. The wax is worth a good deal; that’s a fact. But I don’t believe they’d want to handle it,” said Joe.
Around the next curve they went. Another mile of empty, sunny, water lay before them; and so it was with the next and the next sweep of the river. Then they espied a curl of smoke on the shore. It proved to be the fire of a negro fisherman, who said that he had been on the river all night in his boat, and that no raft had gone past. He was then breakfasting on corn-bread and fried catfish, and he willingly fried more fish for the party and gave them all the bread he could spare. The food made them feel vastly more hopeful, and at last they had something definite to direct them. Giving the negro half a dollar, they turned upstream again.
“You must be wrong, Joe,” said Bob. “The pirates have got it after all and have hidden it somewhere. Otherwise we’d have sighted it.”
“Looks that way,” Joe admitted. “Still, I can’t believe they’re riding with the bees. They’d be scared to death. They must have poled it into one of these backwaters.”
“We know it’s somewhere between here and last night’s camp, anyhow. I’ll search every inch of the shore till I find it.” Bob declared.
Up the river they rowed till the first of the bayou-mouths appeared, like a swampy bay. The boys put their rifles handy, and, dipping the oars without a sound, they pushed into it. But half a dozen strokes showed that the raft could never have come that way, for the channel was silted up and almost choked with dead and rotting timber.
They retreated and started up the river again, crossing to the other side, where something looked like a backwater but proved to be only a willowy cove. A little farther they came unexpectedly upon a creek-mouth, so screened with swamp shrubs that it was invisible at a few yards’ distance. But it led merely into a flooded shallow flat, swarming with mosquitoes and venomous yellow-flies.
“Reminds me of the time we searched the River Island for the houseboat,” said Joe.
Slowly they made their way up stream, leaving not a yard of either shore unobserved. The sun was high now, and both the boys were growing weary, but it was absolutely certain that every stroke was bringing them nearer to the stolen bees.
“I’d never dare to face Alice again and say the bees were lost,” said Joe suddenly.