Dead ahead, and more than a mile away, the river disappeared in a great forest of strange-looking trees. Amongst its shelter might be found food and friends, thought Walter, and the hope gave him fresh courage and strength.
Before sinking back into his seat he carefully surveyed the further shore. His gaze was arrested at a point about a mile behind the canoe. There for about a half mile, the shore lay comparatively clear of timber, very likely having been swept by fire at some time in the past. It was not the character of the shore, however, that arrested Walter's attention. His gaze was fixed upon four objects moving swiftly across the open space and headed towards him. It required no great reasoning to tell him that the four figures wore mounted outlaws and that they had sighted the canoe. It was to be a race between ponies and canoe, as to which should reach the forest first.
With the strength born of desperation, Walter forced the light canoe ahead. Behind him the riders spurred their ponies on at the top of their speed. Walter could see, by glancing over his shoulder from time to time, that the outlaws were steadily gaining, but the canoe was moving swiftly, also, and was rapidly drawing near to the strange forest, and Walter decided with a thrill of joy that the enemy would not arrive in time to cut him off from the shelter of the trees.
The outlaws were not slow to recognize this fact. Their rifles began to crack and the bullets to whistle around the canoe. Fortunately the motion of their mounts made their aim uncertain, and the bullets did but little damage, only one touching the canoe, and it passed harmlessly through the side far above the water line. Before the pursuers could draw near enough to make their fire certain, the canoe had passed in amongst the trees and the outlaws reined in their mounts swearing loudly.
As he neared it, Walter had watched the forest with growing amazement. The river seemed to end at its edge, but as he drew closer the reason for the anxiety of the outlaws to prevent his entering it was plain. No horse could travel through that dark, gloomy expanse. It was a floating forest. Great cypress and giant bays reared their mighty stems from the surface of black scummy water. Amongst their boughs bloomed brilliant orchids and from limb to limb stretched tangled masses of creeping vines and briers.
The trees with their huge spreading roots grew so closely together that it was with difficulty that Walter forced the canoe in and out between them. His exultation at his escape from their enemies had given way to a settled despair. From descriptions he had heard, he recognized this mighty floating forest as the fringe which surrounds that greatest of all mysterious, trackless swamps, the Everglades. Before him lay the mighty unknown, unexplored morass, reeking with fever, and infested with serpents; behind him waited sure death at the hands of the outlaws.
One faint hope alone remained to him. If his strength held out, he might in time come upon a camp of the Seminoles, the only human beings in this unknown land.
Considering the small numbers of the Indians and the vastness of the swamp, it was a faint chance indeed that he or his companion would live to see any of the tribe, but, faint as it was, no other hope remained and Walter sent the canoe onward with feeble strokes.
Gradually the trees grew further and further apart until at last the canoe passed out from their shadows into a lake, surrounded by tall growing grass and reeds. Far as the eye could reach stretched the dismal swamp, broken here and there by lakes or creeks and now and then by an island of higher ground rising from the rotting mud.
Under the heat of the blazing sun there rose around the canoe thick vapors from the scum-covered water and rotting vegetation, bearing in their foul embrace a sickening, deadly stench.