“Ships never come in close, they said,” he mused tiredly, “and miles o’ shoals to the land—­and then just swamp for miles.  Dumb brutes o’ cows, and me on this—­and no water nor feed, nor shade from the sun.”

He stumbled on through the shallows, noticing apathetically that the water was running here.  Nearly to his waist he waded, peering into the starlight.  He was a cowman and he couldn’t swim; he had never seen anything but the dry ranges until he said he would go find the girl he had met once on the upper Brazos—­a girl who told him of sea and sunken forests, of islands of flowers drifting in lonely swamp lakes—­he had wanted to see that land, but mostly the Cajan girl of Bayou Des Amoureaux.

He wouldn’t see her now; he would die among dying cattle, but maybe it was fit for a cattleman to go that way—­a Texas man and Texas cows.

Then he saw a moving thing.  It rode out of the dark and brushed him.  It touched him with soft fingers and he drew them to him.  A water hyacinth, and its purple spike topped his head as he stood waist-deep.  So cool its leaves, and the dripping bulbs that he pressed them to his bloody cheek.  He sank his teeth into them for that coolness on his parched tongue.  The spongy bulb was sweet; it exhaled odorous moisture.  He seized it ravenously.  It carried sweet water, redolent of green forest swamps!

He dragged at another floating lily, sought under the leaves for the buoyant bulb.  A drop or two of the fresh water a man could press from each!

Like a starving animal he moved in the shoals, seeing more drifting garden clumps.  And then a dark object that did not drift.  He felt for it slowly, and then straightened up, staring about.

A flat-bottomed bayou skiff, and in it the oars, a riverman’s blanket-roll of greasy clothes, and a tin box!  He knew the box.  On one end, in faded gilt, was the name “B.  Tedge.”  Rogers had seen it on the grimy shelf in the pilothouse on the Marie Louise.  He felt for the rope; the skiff was barely scraping bottom.  Yes, they had moored it here—­they must be camped on the sands of Au Fer, awaiting the dawn.

A boat?  He didn’t know what a Texas cowman could do with a boat on an alien and unknown shore, but he slipped into it, raised an oar, and shoved back from the sandy spit.  At least he could drift off Au Fer’s waterless desolation.  Tedge would kill him to-morrow when he found him there; because he knew Tedge had fired the Marie for the insurance.

So he poled slowly off.  The skiff drifted now.  Rogers tried to turn to the oar athwart, and awkwardly he stumbled.  The oar seemed like a roll of thunder when it struck the gunwale.

And instantly a hoarse shout arose behind him.  Tedge’s voice—­Tedge had not slept well.  The gaunt cattle burning or choking in the salt tide, or perhaps the lilies of Bayou Boeuf—­anyhow, he was up with a cry and dashing for the skiff.  In a moment Rogers saw him.