An uneventful week followed the episode of the bobcat. The Magnolia went up and down sluggish streams and bayous, while the company of players acted their parts, or rested beneath the palms and under the graceful Spanish moss.
"But it is getting lonesome and tiresome—being away from civilization so long," complained Miss Pennington one day. "We can't get any mail, or anything."
"Who wants mail, when you can sit out on deck and look at such a scene as that?" asked Alice, pointing to a view down a beautiful river.
"Don't you want to come for a row?" asked Paul of Alice, after luncheon.
"I think so," she answered. "Where is Ruth?"
"We'll all go together," he proposed. "Russ wants to get a few pictures, and Jed Moulton is going along to show us where there are some likely spots for novel scenes."
"Of course I'll come!" cried Alice, enthusiastically, as she went to her stateroom to make ready.
A little later the four young people, with the alligator hunter, set out in a big rowboat. Russ took with him a small moving picture camera, as he generally did, even when he had no special object in view.
They rowed up the stream in which the Magnolia was resting, her bow against a fern bank, and presently the party was in a solitude that was almost oppressive. There was neither sign nor sound of human being, and the steamer was lost to sight around a bend in the stream.
"Isn't it wonderful here?" murmured Ruth.