“Can’t we get out of here?” exclaimed Bob, desperately, mopping his wet brow. “This is an awful place. I know they never brought any houseboat through here.”
“About the worst place I ever saw,” Joe agreed.
“An’ de sun’s goin’ down direc’ly, Mr. Joe,” put in Sam. “Where we-all goin’ camp to-night?”
The sun was, in fact, getting low behind the island trees. After sunset, the semi-tropical darkness falls quickly. The coming of night filled Joe with apprehension. There was no place in sight that was dry enough for a camp, and to stay in the boat would mean intolerably cramped quarters, myriads of mosquitoes, and a chance of an attack of fever. At any cost they must get clear of this suffocating swamp.
“We might manage to get out on the main river again. There’s dry land there,” Bob suggested.
“Dere’s dry land somewheres in de middle ob dis River Island,” said Sam. “Mebbe we could git to it.”
“I wish we could. It’s too far to go around to the river. Besides, I don’t know whether we could ever find our way back,” said Joe. “Let’s look out for any spot dry enough to get ashore.”
After circling the pond they turned back into the channel by which they had entered it, and paddled some way up. A narrow, deep creek seemed to lead toward the middle of the island, and they turned wearily into it. It did not look like a guide to a camping ground, and before long it ended in a pile of fallen logs, but the soil did appear firm ashore.
Joe pulled the canoe up to the fallen timber and was about to step out, when a thick, brown moccasin snake glided down the logs and dived without a splash into the water. When the boy had recovered from the start this gave him, he selected a different landing-place and jumped. The log caved in under him in a slush of rotten wood. He went down over his ankles in muck, splashed out, scrambled on a firmer tree-trunk, and thence got ashore upon fairly solid ground.
“I’ve scared all the moccasins away anyhow,” he called back. “Be careful how you jump, though. There may be no bottom to that slough.”