340 
FORES T AND S T REAM 
June, 19R 
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GULF BEFORE WATER AND 
PART SEVEN OF “LOST IN THE EVER¬ 
GLADES.” FURTHER ADVENTURES OF 
THE KING PARTY IN THEIR DESPERATE 
EFFORT TO BREAK THROUGH TO THE 
FOOD WERE UNATTAINABLE. A TRUE 
ACCOUNT OF A REMARKABLE EXPEDITION INTO UNKNOWN COUNTRY 
By W. LIVINGSTON LARNED 
With Illustrations by the Author and from Photographs Taken at the Time 
I T was during one of his voluntary marches 
ahead for a few miles, in the hope of es¬ 
tablishing some marked flow, that Mr. 
King remembered the incident of Johnnie 
Billy’s cockerel. 
At an early hour one morning a sound 
had broken in upon the stillness—a sound 
quite apart from the low murmurings of 
water and of insects. He had awakened 
from a sound sleep and marked its repeti¬ 
tions until all was quiet again. 
A rooster’s crow! That long-drawn chal¬ 
lenge to the approaching day. But it came 
from a great distance—from miles and miles 
across the drying ’Glades. Without dis¬ 
turbing the boys he had stepped out of the 
tent and down to the hammock’s edge, hop¬ 
ing to learn the direction. There were no 
wild chickens in this country. The cock was 
crowing in an Indian settlement on one of 
the larger hammocks. He could be abso¬ 
lutely certain of this. Moreover, he knew 
that Johnnie Billy’s camp lay somewhere to 
the Northwest of the great Coastal. That 
was common rumor. And Johnnie Billy was 
an unaggressive Seminole. He had traded at 
Miami in days gone by. The West Coast 
knew him for his ’gator skins and his peri¬ 
odical trips for supplies. Johnnie Billy 
would have helped them—provided informa¬ 
tion of an invaluable character—given them 
food in plenty and guided them to safety. 
Guides who know the ’Glades will testify, 
however, that the needle in the hay-stack is 
more easily located than even an entire Sem¬ 
inole village on a hammock. You can pass 
within a hundred yards of it and never dis¬ 
cover the slightest suggestion of life. And 
the ’Glades Indian does not make his pres¬ 
ence known. He prefers his isolation. And 
now Mr. King was thinking of that lost oasis 
across the No-Man’s-Land of muck. If they 
had only been able to determine the true 
location of Johnnie Billy’s crowing rooster! 
Hope had not ceased to bear King, Sr., 
bravely onward. They would find the flow 
of one of the rivers. They would soon have 
their “wounded” boat on real water. They 
would run upon fishermen in Tarpon Lake, 
or near the headwaters of Harney River. 
One of the innumerable small streams would 
bear them to safety before food and water 
reached the final ebb. 
The morning of the third was unbearably 
warm. Waves of heat danced over the 
murky sloughs, or festooned the myrtle- 
crowned island clumps. Again came that 
fetid, horrid odor of decayed fish. The 
muck, even when dead gar or masses of 
minnows did not dot its surface, was seeth¬ 
ing with their decomposition. This, mingling 
with the pungent gasses given off by disin- 
mm 
JLARN £ D 
