Then would come a great plash in the still water of the bayou, and the pine knots showed a huge alligator, sulkily sinking, and apparently uncertain whether to make fight or not, at this invasion of his territory.
Great gar-fish shot away from the canoe as she went on, and big owls hooted at being disturbed, sometimes flapping almost into the burning knots. Herons, and other large birds flopped up from points where they had been fishing, and sailed away up the bayou with great croaks and hoarse calls, which were answered from the darkness of the dense bush and high trees by paroquets and many other birds and animals, disturbed in their slumbers by the unusual invasion.
The canoe paddled steadily on, until some time late in the night they reached a curious formation in the middle of the swampy forest.
It was an island, not more than an acre in extent, and quite high, where the padron said they were accustomed to stop to cook and sleep, for the men had had a long pull.
As soon as they had eaten the hot supper, which the cook served shortly after landing, the boys lay down in the canoe on soft mats and slept until the daylight began to show through the tops of the trees.
The old padron soon had the cook up, and he made a pot of coffee such as the boys, in their experience of ship’s cooking, had never tasted, and off they went again, threading the tortuous channels, which would be entirely impassable to any one not accustomed to them.
Once or twice they came into a great lake, full of cypress stumps and knees, and of alligators also, and several times, on the edges of the cane-brakes which they sometimes passed, were bears and deer and quantities of smaller animals, as well as birds.
Eph was so interested at all this that he almost forgot his new position as a messenger carrying important letters, and it was only, at last, when they pulled into a small canal, that he began to think about it.
This canal led up to a place where the water communication seemed to stop. The padron left them for a few moments, and then returned with a dozen negroes, who came from some huts in a grove of trees, and they quickly ran her up an incline, and were ready to launch her down again.
Then Eph and Eric were really astonished. They were on a great embankment, or levee, which seemed to hold in the water of a mighty river, running with resistless force.