During a few minutes hot and almost stifling smoke filled the surrounding atmosphere, but the fire itself merely burned round the edges of the pond and then passed on its roaring way, the wind soon carrying off the smoke also. After waiting some little time for the ashes of the burnt grass to cool, the boys came out of their retreat and picked their way across the blackened ground. The wiregrass had entirely disappeared before the flames, but the tall pines, the scrub-oaks and the clumps of fan-palmettos stood for the most part intact. Here and there some fallen and well-seasoned log still burned vigorously, and in a few instances fire had run up on the oozing sap to the tops of the tallest trees.
Ted and Hubert tramped over the blackened and heated earth about a mile and a half, always hoping soon to see the clearing and log house of some backwoods settler. But when at last they reached a "hammock" growth and descended through it to the borders of a vast "prairie" or marsh, in every respect similar to the one adjoining Deserters' Island, this pleasing hope became a sigh of regret.
It was now quite clear that they were still within the borders of the great Okefinokee, and that they had just traversed one of its islands or areas of elevated land. The origin of the fire puzzled Ted at first, but he concluded that some of the slackers, or hunters from the outside, had recently been there and had neglected to extinguish or clear a space about their camp-fire.
"It's going to rain," said Ted, looking up at the darkening sky, "and we'd better fix our camp right away."
A favorable spot on the outskirts of the hammock was chosen, and they hurriedly erected a "brush tent," or lean-to, similar to those they had heard the slackers speak of building when too far away to return to camp for the night. When the fugitives began their tree-top retreat that morning, July had relieved Hubert of his gun and given the boy his hatchet in exchange. With the hatchet the boys now cut down a slender sapling which they tied at each end with bear-grass thongs to two small trees about ten feet apart. Against this cross-bar, which was about four feet from the ground, eight or ten other cut saplings were leaned at an angle of about forty-five degrees and less than a foot apart. Over these were then arranged about a hundred palmetto fans cut within a few feet of the spot, thus forming a thatch which was protected against gusts of wind by two or three other saplings laid diagonally across. They thus secured a fairly good shelter and were sure of sleeping dry unless the wind changed and blew into the open front instead of against the thatch at the back.
It was nearly dark when the work was finished, but it had not yet begun to rain. While Hubert now gathered wood for their camp-fire, Ted took his gun and stole off into the woods, hoping to shoot something for supper. He had not gone very far when a fluttering and dimly outlined forms on a high limb of a tall bay tree indicated a "turkey roost." Taking careful aim, he fired, and then, amid the noisy flap of wings as the wild fowl scattered, he thought he heard a soft thud on the ground beneath the "roost." Running to the foot of the bay tree, he was delighted to find that he had bagged a plump turkey-hen.
Some Spanish moss having been gathered and spread on the ground in the acute angle of the lean-to, and portions of the turkey having been broiled with fair success on glowing coals raked out of the fire, the boys satisfied their hunger and lay down with a feeling of comfort which hardly seemed in keeping with their continuing misfortunes, and which was not lessened by the harmless patter of the rain-drops on the thatch over their heads.
"I hope a bear won't come along and knock our shelter down," remarked Hubert a few minutes after they lay down.
There was no real apprehension in his tone, the first nervousness inseparable from sleeping in the remote woods of the Okefinokee having by this time disappeared even in his case. Ted stretched his limbs, yawned, and made no reply; but a few minutes later he said:
"You remember Uncle Walter saying the night before he left for Washington that the experts thought the war would last about three years? If it does, we'll be about old enough to go in—if we volunteer, and I will."