The trader’s daughter had been spirited away by the Snake Queen; but now she was in the hands of Big Moccasin and the hated and hunted Yellow Bloodhound.
Had fate guided the woman into the hands of those devils? Even so it seemed.
The boat seemed a long while passing their station, and it was not until the voices were dying away in the gloom, that Doc Bell recovered his firmness.
“Swamp Oak, we must outwit those devils,” he said, in his old firmness of tone. “My mind kin scarcely hold all that hes happened to-night, much less b’lieve it. But come, we’ll foller thet ghostly boat, an’ when ther Bloodhound runs ashore he’ll find somebody he won’t be lookin’ for.”
They rose to their feet and glided down the bank of the subterranean lake, a short distance in the rear of the boat.
All at once a peculiar noise told them that the prow of the canoe had turned, and was making toward the shore, a short distance ahead.
“Be ready, Injun,” whispered Doc Bell. “We’ve got the dogs now, an’ the gal, too!”
Unsuspicious of danger, the occupants of the boat approached the shore at the very point where our friends, with drawn knives and determined visages, lay waiting to receive them.
“Land, at last!” they heard Jules Bardue say, with a breath of relief, as the boat struck the rocks. “Furies! what a long ride that was. Here, chief—here’s the girl; no, take me out first. My legs are stiff, but once on shore, I can walk. Jules Bardue ain’t dead yet; no, and he’s not going to die while his enemies live. Be careful, Moccasin; don’t touch my hands; broken ramrods hurt like a wolf’s teeth.”
He paused, for the giant chief was lifting him from the boat, and, strain their eyes as much as they could, the watchers of the debarkation could not distinguish the forms of the voyagers.