“Only way to find out is to try it.”  A minute later Dick called out.

“Come here, Ned, it’s muddy, but it’s fresh.  Oh, isn’t it good!”

As Ned approached the pool Dick, who was lying on the prairie beside it, lifted his face from the water of which he had been drinking, and was turning to speak to his companion when the head of a great alligator, with wide open jaws, was thrust violently out of the pool, just touching the boy’s face.  Dick fell back on the prairie and scrambled away from the pool.  It was a minute before he spoke and then he said to Ned: 

“Let’s get back to work.  I don’t want another drink for a month.  It makes me sick to think of it.”

The slough was farther away than Ned thought and the road to it lay through a marsh.  Often they sank to the waist and wallowed for rods, carrying the canoe which seemed to weigh a ton, or dragging it beside them.  Moccasins were plentiful, but the boys were too tired to be worried by them.  They had to make two more trips to carry their cargo, and on the last one, as Dick was staggering under a load of smoked meat and a heavy, salted skin, he was heard to say: 

“I wonder why I killed that bear.  I will never kill another one.”

There was dry ground beside the slough, under some willow trees, and the explorers were glad to rest there for the night.  A duck flew down by the willows as if seeking to camp with them and he succeeded, for they had him for supper.

CHAPTER XVII

AMONG THE SEMINOLES

The young explorers had found an uncharted route from the Bay of Florida to the Everglades and the work before them was now easy.

The water was deeper than was needed to float their canoe, and the grass too light to trouble them.  They sheered off and avoided all bands of saw-grass unless they found trails across them.  The Glades were dotted with little keys of bay, myrtle and cocoa plum.  These were small and usually submerged.  A few larger keys were covered with heavier timber, pine, oak, mastic, palmetto and other woods.  In these, deer were plentiful and bear and panther sometimes found.

The boys went to several keys before they found one with dry land enough for a camp.  It had been used for camping by the Seminoles for many years and was the only bit of land above the surface of the water for miles.  On it were piles of turtle shells, while scattered about were bones of deer and alligator and skulls of bear and smaller animals.  A cultivated papaw which some Indian had planted within a few years, stood twelve feet high and was filled with great melon-like papaws, each one of which weighed from five to ten pounds.

“Better than cantaloupe,” said Dick as he finished half of a big one as a preliminary to his supper, “but what’s this you are giving us for coffee?”

“Coffee’s out,” replied Ned.  “The fellows that took the rifle cleaned out most of the coffee.”