“I’m—all right—” came back slowly.
“Sure you are!” exclaimed Bob. “We’re nearly there. Hold on.”
Tom may have been all right, but how he held on, neither he nor Bob could ever tell. The moment, the aeroplane lit on the white border of Crystal Lake, the boy on the ladder toppled from his nerve racking perch and for a quarter of an hour, knew nothing.
But, about eleven o’clock, the hatless, shoeless Tom began to be himself again. By noon, luncheon disposed of, his spirits were nearly normal. What had happened to him he told in these words:
“In the first place, the two Indians we saw gettin’ out of the boat jumped in it right away and disappeared in the trees—up the canal. I was stumped. But when I got down to the bottom of the mound, I found anothah boat—cut out of a log and half full of watah. I pulled her out, baled her, and with a pole that was lyin’ in her started up the creek or canal.
“It was as dismal a lane as you evah traveled. Nothin’ but tangled marsh and walls o’ moss on both sides, and so chuck full o’ little ’gatahs an’ cotton mouth snakes I was sort afraid they’d push a hole in the bottom o’ the boat. But it wasn’t far, not ovah a half a mile, an’ I came to light again—the island an’ the shacks.
“The canal, which is theah road, ran ’round the whole place an’ then ran away on the othah side into the swamp again. I was tired o’ lookin’ at them glassy-eyed cotton mouth reptiles, and, pushin’ the canoe up to a sort of a landin’ where I saw the boat the two Indians had used, I jumped out.
“I was sort o’ scared, too, but I just had a hunch to go ahead. For a minute, I saw people rushin’ ’round among the shacks on the high ground, and then, when I got to the top, they’d all disappeared. There was a noise on the othah side o’ the slope. When I got so I could look down theah, three canoe loads of Indians were just disappearin’ in the canal that ran off in that direction into the swamp.
“That seemed pretty good. At least, it saved me the trouble o’ fussin’ with ’em if they didn’t like me. An’ I felt like laughin’. I sta’ted back to the sheds and then, all of a sudden, I had an idea. I turned around and had anothah look. I guessed right. They hadn’t left a single boat. ‘That’s all right,’ I said to myself, ‘I’ll go back the way I came.’ And then, with no one to disturb me, I set about seein’ what a ‘Secret City o’ the Seminoles’ was like.