CHAPTER XXIII. 



DEER-STALKING AND FIRE-FISHING. 



THE MULE ELEMENT STRONG IN ME "WALKING BY FAITH, NOT BY 

 SIGHT" IN SEARCH OF ALLIGATORS A FIGHT BETWEEN AN EAGLE 

 AND A FISH-HAWK A TWO-YEAR-OLD DOE STARTS FROM THE 

 THICKET I FIRE, ROVER STARTS ON THE CHASE I CARRY HOME 

 MY PRIZE FIRE-FISHING SHEEPSHEAD NEEDLE-FISH MUL- 

 LET A HUNDRED POUNDS OF FISH IN THREE HOURS WE CATCH 

 AN INQUISITIVE SHARK. 



EARLY on Wednesday morning I started to return to 

 North creek, the scene of our previous night's fire-hunt, in 

 hope of getting another shot at deer, which we had found 

 were plentiful in that locality. Mr. Webb told me to keep 

 well to the right, after leaving the trail at the rear of the 

 farm, and that if I did not I would strike a large tract of 

 scrub live-oak thickets ; that I could not get through them, 

 and would have to go a long way out of my course to get 

 around them. I had heard a great deal about these impene- 

 trable scrub-oak thickets, and was anxious to see one. Besides, 

 I am liberally endowed with that peculiar natural quality 

 which in the mule is termed stubbornness, and was anxious to 

 find a thicket that I could not get through. So I kept well 

 to the left, and sure enough after I had gone a half or three- 

 quarters of a mile from the farm I felt my legs becoming 

 seriously entangled in what at first seemed to be a vine of 

 some kind running on and near the ground, but on examina- 

 tion I at once concluded it was the much-talked-of and much- 

 dreaded scrub live-oak. It has something the appearance of 

 a graue-vine in places. It runs every way from the root, and 



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