“Alice,” he said rather thickly, “you surely saved my life. I—I’ll never forget this.”
“Oh, Joe!” said Alice, and burst into weeping.
“Hold on, Allie! It’s all right now!” exclaimed Bob.
“That bucket trick was the cleverest thing I ever saw,” said Carl.
“How did you come to think of it?” asked Joe.
“I d-don’t know,” Alice quavered, wiping her eyes. “It came to me like a flash. I’d read of it somewhere—that you could shove a bucket down over the head of a drowning man, and it would hold the air—like a diving-bell, you know.”
“You thought of it just in time,” said Joe. “I’d taken my last breath, I thought. I ought to have had more sense than to wade into that place, but I never thought of any sort of quicksand. You didn’t see any alligators, did you, Alice?” he added hastily, as the girl showed some symptoms of renewed tears.
“N-no,” said Alice. “I thought I saw one, and I watched it a l-long time, but it was only a l-log. I was away up the river; that’s why I didn’t hear you sooner. I ran as soon as I heard you. The boys were just coming back, too. This is an awful place. Let’s go away from it.”
The muddy bayou did look sinister and depressing to all of them since it had shown itself to be a death-trap, and they got aboard the boat and drifted down-stream again. Joe felt in no condition for exploring; he felt weak and used up, chilled to the bone and shivering, though the bayou water had not been cold. Within a quarter of a mile they landed on a high bit of shore, and Joe stretched himself in the full sunshine, now scorching hot, to dry his clothes and warm the chill out of his body.
Bob and Carl took their guns and went exploring after eating dinner, but Joe stayed where he was, soaking in the sun, and Alice stayed to keep him company. As the hot sun baked him through he felt better, and the horror of his recent adventure began to wear off. It had left him with a tremendous admiration for Alice’s pluck and ingenuity, however. This was the first occasion when he had been alone with her for any length of time; and he tried to amuse her with stories of the river country, of the great swamps, bears and alligators, outlaw negroes and half-wild houseboat-men who dwelt on the river. Adventures were no novelty to Alice, however, and she replied with tales of the great north woods, and their narrow escapes in establishing an apiary in the wild raspberry country. When she talked of the bees she always became enthusiastic, and she explained something to Joe of modern apiary methods, of which he was profoundly ignorant.