CHAPTER XXV
OUT OF THE WILDS
For perhaps several seconds the two parties strangely met in that Florida wild stood staring at one another. Then the two girls hurried forward, and one of them exclaimed:
"Oh, have you come for us?"
"Not exactly, Miss Madison."
"Oh—you—you know us?" gasped the other.
"Certainly, Mabel," laughed Alice. "Don't you remember us—the moving picture girls?"
"Ruth—Alice DeVere!" came the simultaneous cry from the lost girls—now the found girls. "Oh, how did you ever get here?" asked Helen Madison, for it was really she and her sister. Alice had recognized them first, and Ruth knew them a moment later.
"We are lost, like yourselves," said Ruth. "Oh, but can you tell us where our steamer is?"
"Your steamer—no!" half-sobbed Mabel. "Oh, it is awful! We have been lost a long time—it seems a month, but of course it isn't. We can't find our way out of this wilderness. It is a labyrinth, and we dare not go far from this hut for fear we shall never find it again. It has been terrible. But if you are lost you cannot help us. What shall we do?"