THE "DEVIL'S ISLAND."
Proud of my achievement, I shouldered the prize, and started to return to the skiff.
I had not gone three steps, when I again stopped, to simply ask myself the way. I saw that I had lost it.
The chase after the wounded eagle, both tortuous and prolonged, had carried me out of sight of the deadwood as well as the light let down through its leafless branches. I was once more in the midst of a continuous twilight.
I looked for my tracks. Taking time and pains, I might have discovered and retraced them. But the spread-fans of the palmettoes quite covered the ground, and I had not the patience to put them aside for such exploration. I supposed the island to be of only some forty or fifty acres in extent; and, by keeping straight on in any direction, I must soon come to its edge. Following this, would in time bring me to the skiff.
Taking a straight shoot through the underwood, I walked briskly on, and, as I expected, soon saw the sunlight gleaming before me.
There was an opening with water; but, as I drew near to it, I could see it was not the river, but a sort of lagoon or pool of stagnant water.
I kept for a short distance along its edge, and discovered that it communicated with a "bayou" that appeared to lead out into the river.
I fancied that it would take me the wrong way, and was turning to make a traverse in the opposite direction, when something down under the bank caught my eye. I first took it for a floating log; but on closer scrutiny it proved to be an old canoe of the kind known as a "dug-out."
It was moored to the root of one of the great cypresses that overshadowed the water. It was partially concealed by the outstretched fronds of the palmettoes that grew around the root of the cypress.