“Where do you want to go, Dick?”

“What’s the use of asking me?  You have been talking Everglades and Big Cypress in a steady streak, for two days to that old Injun.  You must have a map of his brain by this time.”

“We can go through the Everglades to Lake Okeechobee, out through the canal and down the Caloosahatchee, but the Everglades will be much the same as we have seen, only more and worse saw-grass and so harder work.  If we go to the east we will pretty soon come out at the coast which we want to avoid.  I think we had better strike across to the prairies and the border land between the Everglades and the Big Cypress Swamp.  Bear, deer, panther and wild turkey are to be found in that country, and we won’t have to hurry so much to get through in the time we talked of for the trip.  What do you say?”

“The woods for me, every time.  Then I think it would be better for Tom’s health.  I am afraid he would get melancholy if we kept him on the water too much.  Let’s put in a big day’s work and get somewhere.  I can stand sleeping in the water once in a while, but don’t like it as a regular thing.”

They put in their big day’s work without getting very far.  They struck shoal water in the morning where little pillars of coral, rising almost to the surface, threatened to tear a hole in their canoe.  When they got overboard and waded, the same sharp points of coral hurt their feet and bruised their shins.  During the afternoon they held their course, as best they could, for a tall palmetto, which, lifting its head above a waste of water and grass, gave promise of land enough for a camp beneath it.  They dragged the canoe through a narrow strand of saw-grass, but were turned westward by a heavier band of the same obstacle, and finally made their camp for the night on a bushy little submerged key, where Ned lay on top of the canoe and was kept from sleeping by the fear of rolling over into the water, and Dick lay on a bed of brush that soon settled into the water with him.  At first Tom climbed a little tree, but didn’t seem pleased with his quarters.  He looked at Dick’s bed for a moment and turned in for the night with Ned in the canoe.  Good progress was made on the following day, for the boys were tired of trying to sleep on the water and meant to find land enough for a camp before another night.  They found much open water, most of the grass was light and the few strands of saw-grass they encountered were easily avoided.  They saw few keys and all of those were submerged.  So again when night came there was no dry land for a camp and the bed of branches was built up in the shallow water.  About midnight Ned, noticing that his companion was restless, said to him: 

“Dick, can you sleep any more?”

“Sleep any more?” said the indignant Dick.  “I haven’t slept any, yet.”

“Then let’s get out of this and paddle the rest of the night.  It’s full moon, paddling isn’t half as hard as trying to sleep on that bed and we may get somewhere.”