In the afternoon the boys entered a big bay that seemed to have no other outlet.  They followed its shore for an hour, exploring every little bay that looked big enough to hide the smallest creek.  They sounded the depth of the water with their paddles and traced a little channel to a clump of bushes that overhung the water from the shore.  Johnny pulled the bow of the canoe under the overhanging branches and found a little creek through which the water was flowing.  They dragged the canoe into the stream and found water deep enough to float it, but branches and vines obstructed them above, while logs and snags troubled them below.  They used their knives and the axe more than they did their paddles.  At times they lay down in the canoe and dragged it under branches and at others got overboard, and standing in water and mud, lifted it over logs.  They were in the deep gloom of a jungle from which the thick growth above shut out nearly all the light.  As they pushed the canoe forward, unseen vines seized their throats in a garroting clutch, while solid masses of spider-webs stuck to their faces and spiders the size of a saucer ran over them.  As Johnny sat in the bow, he collected the most spiders, since Dick only got those which his companion managed to dodge, but then Johnny was used to the critters and didn’t mind them, while Dick wasn’t, and did.

“What kind of snakes are these swimming round my legs?” asked Dick, as he stood nearly waist-deep in mud and water and helped lift the canoe over the biggest log they had struck.

“Speckle-belly moccasins.  Mustn’t get scared o’ them, if you’re goin’ to hunt in this country.  They ain’t likely to bite if yer don’t step on ’em and they won’t kill yer, nohow,” said Johnny.

The stream was so crooked that the boys had to travel three miles to gain one and as the troubles in their path seemed to increase they talked of turning back.  But as it was already too late to get out of the creek before dark, they decided to keep on.  As it was, darkness overtook them while they were yet in the creek.  Among their stores was a lantern, by the light of which they progressed for a little while, when Johnny proposed making camp.

“But we can’t camp here.  I’m not a merman, to sleep in the water,” said Dick.

“You can stretch out in the canoe, if we tie it so it won’t tip over, and I’ll build a brush bed good enough for me in ten minutes,” said Johnny, who took the axe, and cut a short pole, which he rested on the branches of two trees which grew side by side, so that the stick lay parallel to a fallen tree trunk which lay about five feet distant.  Then he cut a number of inch saplings into six-foot lengths, with which he made a platform from the pole to the tree, and spreading his blanket on this elastic couch announced that his bed was ready.  The boys made a hearty supper from the fragments that were left from the bountiful provision that Mrs. Streeter had made for their dinner.  Dick’s bed in