He pushed his boat some distance up the river, then, lying flat down in it, allowed it to drift downstream.
“Might see that ghost again to-night,” he said, chuckling.
In this position it was impossible for him to see perils ahead. A slanting snag caught his drifting boat and set it tilting. Before he could realize what was happening he found himself struggling in the black waters.
Striking out with both hands, he made a grab for the overturned boat. To his dismay he heard it give forth a sucking sound, then saw it sink, prow first, in ten feet of water.
“Darn!” he muttered. “Old dugout. Waterlogged. What now?”
There was only one answer to this: shore as quickly as possible. What if it were the enemy’s shore? There were alligators in these waters, great scaly creatures ten feet long. He had heard one barking not three rods from him but a moment before.
“Here for the night,” he groaned, as he reached a leaning tree trunk and climbed upon it.
This seemed true enough. The tree grew at the edge of a marsh. There were alligators in the marsh. To travel that marsh in the dark was to court death.
Imagine his relief when, just as he had resigned himself to this hard fate, he saw the dark form of a canoe drift into the shadows.
So surprised and overjoyed was he that, casting caution to the winds, he hailed the solitary boatman.