“Poles? What for? We’ve got paddles for it,” said Harry.
“Paddles not much good in de ’glades, Massa Harry,” replied Quatty, “we need poles to git ober de groun’.”
After some hunting among the dense undergrowth Quatty finally found two straight sticks of tough second growth timber, about fifteen feet long, that satisfied him. He cut these off with his heavy sailor’s knife with the remark:
“Soon we hab two berry good canoe poles.”
He whittled both sticks to a sharp point at one end and then cut two triangular bits of wood from another tree which he affixed with vine lashings to the poles about six inches from the bottom. The contrivance was exactly like the steps that are affixed to stilts but there were two of them.
“What are you putting those on for?” asked the boys.
“Plenty ob mud in de ’glades sometimes,” replied Quatty, “dese lilly steps keeps de poles from diggin’ in too deep.”
“Well, Quatty, you are a genius,” exclaimed Frank.
“Oh dese not my inwention, Massa Frank,” modestly confessed Quatty. “Seminoles use him many, many years befo’ Quatty come here.”
The boys had decided on a daring plan. It was nothing less than, as soon as the night fell, to pole and paddle their way through the water-courses till they reached a spot near the camp of the kidnappers of Lieutenant Chapin and there reconnoiter and, if possible, overhear enough to give them a clue to the lieutenant’s whereabouts. Their first object being of course to rescue him. The recovery of the formula of his invention was—though important in the extreme—a secondary consideration.