Striking out in a fresh direction, he was not long before he found that the ground began to yield again, and his spirits rose as he found that he was plunging into a swampy part once more, while his heart literally leaped as all at once right in front there was a rush as of one of the great alligators being startled from its lair.
The lad stopped short, but only for a few moments, before mastering the sensation of dread, and plunging on as nearly as he could make out in the direction the great lizard had taken.
“It’s afraid of me,” he muttered, as he drew his dirk, “and if it turns at bay on finding itself followed, I ought to be able to do something with this, though it is such a stupid ornament of a thing. I’m not afraid, and I won’t be afraid, but I wish my heart didn’t beat so fast, and that choking sensation wouldn’t keep on rising in my throat.”
But though the lad behaved as bravely as was possible to any man, by pressing on and determinedly following in the track of the alligator, his heart kept on with its heavy pulsation and the perspiration streamed down his face in the stiflingly hot swamp.
He had the satisfaction, though, of making out that the reptile was scuffling on before him, and now he grew more accustomed to the fact he was able to make out the creature’s trail and just dimly see the movement ahead of the thick cane growth as it rapidly writhed itself along.
“It’s getting softer,” thought Murray, “so I must be getting towards the river. Won’t turn upon me and attack, will it, when it gets in its own element?”
That was a startling thought, but it was only another difficulty in the way of one who had mastered his natural dread and determined in his peril to make a brave fight.
“It’s no more an alligator’s element than the land is,” thought the lad. “The brute’s amphibious, and I don’t believe it will turn upon me unless I stick my dirk into it; and I don’t care, I’ll risk it, if I die for it. I don’t believe they’re so tough as people say.”
Then a more staggering thought assailed him, and this time, instead of forcing his way through the tangle and dragging his feet out of the swampy soil, he stopped short. For the hope that had sustained him suddenly sank away. He had been feeling sure that the guide he feared to a great extent was after all leading him towards the little river, and that once he reached the bank he would know by the current, however sluggish, the way down to the boat; but now the terrible thought attacked him that the reptile might after all have its dwelling-place in some swampy lagoon such as he had read was common in the islands and the Southern States.
“It’s of no use,” he said to himself, as he stopped short, panting and exhausted; “this can’t be the right way. There’s no clear river down which a fellow could wade or swim; this is one of those dreadful swamps—dismal swamps, don’t they call them?—and the farther I go the worse off I shall be. Oh, where’s my pluck? Where it ought to be,” he said, answering himself; and he struggled on again, for he had awakened to the fact that the rustling and splash made by the reptile was dying out.