"My good man," said I, "will you put your hospitable offer into execution, and take——"
I could not continue, for I was literally suffocated with the heat and smoke. The very water of the creek was getting warm.
"I've a notion," said the yankee, with his usual drawl, and apparently only just perceiving our distress, "I've a notion we had better be movin' out o' the way o' the fire. Now, strangers, in with you." And he helped Carleton and myself into the boat, where we lay down, and became insensible from heat and exhaustion.
When we recovered our senses, we found ourselves in the bottom of the boat, and the old Yankee standing by us with a bottle of whisky in his hand, which he invited us to taste. We felt better for the cordial, and began to look around us.
Before us lay an apparently interminable cypress swamp, behind us a sheet of water, formed by the junction of the two creeks, and at present overhung by a mass of smoke that concealed the horizon from our view. From time to time there was a burst of flame that lit up the swamp, and caused the cypress-trees to appear as if they grew out of a sea of fire.
"Come," said the old Yankee, "we must get on. It is near sunset, and we have far to go."
"And which way does our road lie?" I asked.
"Across the cypress swamp, unless you'd rather go round it."
"The shortest road is the best," said Carleton.
"The shortest road is the best!" repeated the Yankee contemptuously, and turning to his companions. "Spoken like a Britisher. Well, he shall have his own way, and the more so as I believe it to be as good a one as the other. James," added he, turning to one of the men, "you go further down, through the Snapping Turtle swamp; we will cross here."