“Why, that must be the direction of the little river,” he thought; “and instead of following the horrible brute here have I run away; and now how am I to find the way that it pointed out? That’s soon done,” he said, as he thought of the broken and crushed-down canes which must mark the alligator’s track; and he began at once to search for what proved to be absent. There were bruised and trampled growths which he sprang at directly, but his reason soon pointed to the fact that they had not been made by the huge lizard he had started from its lurking place where it had crawled ashore to watch for the approach of prey, but by himself in his flight, and though he tried over the swampy ground again and again, it was only to grow more confused, and at last he stopped short, baffled and enraged against himself.
“Oh!” he ejaculated, as he raised one foot to stamp it down heavily upon the earth, with the result that he drove it through a soft crust of tangled growth and sent up a gush of muddy, evil-smelling water, and then had to drag his shoe out with a loud sucking sound, while the foot he had not stamped was beginning to sink. “It’s enough to drive any one mad,” he muttered. “Just as I am entrusted with something important I go and muddle it all, and the more I try the worse the hobble grows.”
He took a few steps to his right, to where the earth beneath him felt firmer, and listened, but the floundering and scuffling of the alligator had ceased, and he looked in vain for the traces of its passage.
“Think of it,” he said, half aloud; “I trod on the brute, and it dashed off, frightened to death, to make for the river; and then what did I do?—Turned round and ran away as if the brute was coming after me with its jaws opened wide ready to take me down at a mouthful! Alligators are not crocodiles. Here, I’m a brave fellow, upon my word! I’m getting proud of myself, and no mistake!”
He stood and listened as he looked around and tried to pierce the dense growth, but in vain, for all was thick vegetation, and eye and ear were exercised in vain.
There was a soft, dull, half croaking sound here and there at a distance which suggested the existence of frogs, and from the trees whose clustering leaves overhead turned the brake into a soft twilight, he now and then heard the twittering of some bird. But he could see nothing, and for a few minutes he began to give way to a feeling of despair.
“I daren’t shout,” he thought, “for it would be like calling the attention of the enemy. The Yankee and his people are sure to be on the lookout to pounce upon one, and though if they took me prisoner—they wouldn’t dare to do anything else—my being taken would not so much matter if May or Titely got down to the boat and reached the Seafowl. How do I know that they would get there? Oh, was ever poor wretch in such a hole before!”
“Here, I must do something,” he cried, at last, rousing himself to take some action. “The river must wind about, and if I keep on I shall be sure to come across it at last.”
He started off in what he hoped was the right direction, and forced his way through the tangled growth, to find that after a short time the earth began to grow firmer beneath his feet; and then he stopped short.
“Must be wrong,” he thought, “for the river banks were swampy.”