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brush nest was overflowing with them 
—large and small. 
“What is it?” he demanded, when I 
came up with him. 
The answer was easy. On a former 
trip into the ’Glades I had met up with 
this same grand hoax. 
An alligator, contrary to the usual 
custom, for, as a rule, they build po- 
rous mounds out on the ’glade floor, 
when they can find a likely place, free 
from enveloping water, had made its 
nest under a cypress clump and depos- 
ited her numerous eggs. The depos- 
itory was a complex mixture of earth 
and twigs and branches. But Mrs. 
’gater does not always remain to hatch 
out her young: she trusts the sun and 
the humidity to do that. And a lazy 
turtle had selected the same easy place 
to start a household. 
We lingered here for fully a half 
hour—and then— 
Then developed the danger signal! 
Sonnyboy, who was standing, first 
sensed it. As straight as an Indian, 
he sniffed the air. 
“Smoke!” he cried aloud, “and... 
listen !”’ 
I not only caught the whiff of pun- 
gent, aromatic vapor, but heard the 
sound! It was a crackling, hissing, 
purring monotone, as if bees were 
'swarming a long ways off. The smell 
of smoke was pronounced. 
There was but one thing for me to 
think! It came to me at the vey first 
whiff. I felt something at my throat 
and at my conscience, simultaneously! 
The Indian village camp fire! In my 
hurry to get away, I had ignored the 
very things which I had lectured to 
Sonnyboy—“always put out a camp 
fire. Always be sure the last spark is 
gone. Dig up fresh earth and pour 
it over the coals... never, never 
break camp until you make certain of 
this. That was what Old Chip had 
told Sonnyboy in the Pennsylvania hills, 
when we had visual evidence of what 
can happen. That was what I had 
lectured in my own pompous manner! 
And now IJ was the guilty one! 
HERE could be no other answer. 
The freshening wind, sweeping 
down into open glade, had caught up 
some vagrant sparks and carried them 
along, to leaves and twigs and brush, 
burned into tinder by the sun. The 
northern portion of the hammock had 
obviously felt the effects of a great 
dried area. The place would inevitably 
become a seething, roaring mass of 
flames, under the baneful influence of 
that driving wind! 
And it was up to me! 
“Fire... isn’t it!” gasped Sonny- 
boy. 
Through the 
little puffs of yellowish smoke. 
myrtles came spurty 
Over 
|the tree tops, birds were flying rapidly, 
It will identify you. 
their shrill calls echoing the sudden 
tragedy. Several moving objects flashed 
past us in the ferns—and were gone! 
“Quick!” I shouted, “yes—yes—yes, 
it’s fire! And we can’t stay here! We 
must get into the open as fast as we 
can.” 
I was entirely conscious of the fact 
that, given any headway at all, it was 
merely a question of minutes before the 
full force of the hammock fire would 
be at our heels—and it could travel 
faster than man, at his best! 
But I was also aware that it would 
avail us nothing to bear to our right 
and out into the open ’Glades, at this 
point. Here, everywhere there was 
water to the depth of from a foot to 
five. Nor would wading avail. The 
bottom was unadulterated muck, which 
would suck a man down to his death 
at the first foot-fall. The sloughs were 
even worse and there was an impass- 
able barrier of vigorous saw grass. We 
had ourselves witnessed proof of the 
fact that the alligators here were not 
only plentiful but monsters in size. 
Our only salvation, therefore, was to 
keep desperately plunging ahead, East- 
ward, or bear to the left, in the hope 
that we might come out on a more 
propitious side of the hammock, which 
at that point must have been almost a 
mile in width. Not for a moment did 
I underestimate the peril of the situa- 
tion. 
T WAS out of the question to make 
great headway through the jungle; 
true, at times we would come out into 
open areas, where the hammock floor 
was comparatively clear of entangling 
growth, and where only dead, gray 
bodies of prostrate trees flashed in our 
path, spectrally fascinating in that haze 
of morning light filtered down through 
close-meshed bays, but, for the most 
part, the going was extremely difficult, 
what with the immense patches of giant 
ferns, the hindering masses of scrub 
oak, tough as leather, moss of a pecu- 
liarly foot-snaring variety, and nasty 
communities of gall berries-and young 
myrtles. A dozen times I tripped and 
fell. Sonnyboy was less clumsy, but 
more than once he plunged headfore- 
most into the green pitfalls at his feet, 
to the jangling chorus of tin drinking 
cups, coffee pot and frying pan. 
This boy of mine was not afraid. It 
was the one great thing which sus- 
tained me. When his face turned back, 
he was trying to smile—always. Fear? 
The mystery of night may have tem- 
porarily awed him, when such things 
were anticipated, but he had certainly 
“come through clean.” 
HOSE hammock miles were inter- 
minable! Coming upon a sort of 
knoll, built artificially higher than the 
ground about, by accumulation of 
Page 168 
