“Faith, and what a foine liar he would make wid a little training,” whispered Dinny. “Why, I can’t even see my hand before me face.”
“Hush,” whispered Bart, and then he half started up in the boat, for there was a sudden splashing, a shout, and the piteous yelping and baying of a dog, which was taken up in chorus by the others present.
Yelp—bark—howl, accompanied by the splashing and beating of water, and rustling of reeds and canes, and then a choking, suffocating sound, as of some animal being dragged under water, after which the dogs whined and seemed to be scuffling away.
“What’s the matter with the dogs?” said the overseer.
“One of those beasts of alligators dragged the poor brute down,” said the sergeant. “It struck me with its tail.”
There was a rushing, scuffling noise here, and the heavy trampling of people among the tangled growth, growing more distant moment by moment, in the midst of which Mary began to use her pole, and the boat glided on through the thick, half-liquid mud.
“Sure, an’ it’s plisant,” said Dinny, coolly; “the dogs on one side, and the crockidills on the other. It isn’t at all a tempting spot for a bathe; but I’ve got to have a dip as soon as we get out of this into the sea.”
“What for?” whispered Bart.
“Bekase I’m wet with fresh wather and mud, and I’m a man who likes a little salt outside as well at in. It kapes off the ugly fayvers of the place. Do you want me to catch a cowld?”
“Silence, there!” said Mary, gruffly, from her place in the prow; and for quite an hour she toiled on through the intense darkness, guiding the boat from the tangle of weedy growth and cane into winding canal-like portions of the lagoon, where every now and then they disturbed some great reptile, which plunged into deeper water with a loud splash, or wallowed farther among the half-liquid mud.