The new camp was in a little glade on a creek which the explorers had followed for about three miles west from the Everglades.  They paddled through the creek till it melted in the meadows; they poled their canoe along the channel which the grass concealed; they dragged it by hand under bushes which covered it, until the little glade opened to them and showed enough dry ground for a camp and several shallow streams winding around clumps of bushes, but always stretching out toward the west.  At daylight the young explorers were again on the move, dragging the canoe along twisting streams not deep enough to float it, until they struck a larger stream in a heavier growth.  The little streams disappeared, the water grew deeper, but the jungle became worse, and every yard of their path had to be carved out with their knives.

“This doesn’t look very hopeful,” said Dick as they stopped the heavy work for a few minutes’ rest.  “Hadn’t we better go back a ways and hunt up a more open trail?”

“Not on your life,” replied Ned.  “We are on the right track and we’ve got to fight it through.  The only thing I’ll stop for is a mangrove swamp, and I’ll try mighty hard to get around that.  But we won’t find any mangrove swamp to trouble us.”

“You seem to know just what we’re going to find on this trail, if you call it a trail.”

“I know what we ought to find, and that’s better.”

“Why is it better?”

“Because then we’ll know if we’re on the right track.”

“All right, Neddy, I quite agree with you.  I only wanted to know that you were sure of your ground.”

The trees became heavier in a narrow belt along the stream, but open sky could be seen beyond them.

“Don’t you want to walk across to that open place, Ned, to find out what kind of country it is?”

“I know now.  It’s open prairie or swamp and the next big water we strike will be the salt-water lakes.  We will probably come to a fresh-water river first and that pretty soon.”

“Conceit’s good for the consumption, Neddy.  What do you want to bet on finding that river in an hour?”

“I’ll eat my hat if we don’t find it in a quarter of a mile.  I won’t bet on the time, because at the rate you’re working it may take three weeks to get there.”

“Ned, you’re a wizard, for there is the river.”

The river flowed gently between high banks, densely wooded.  The waters were alive with fish, and long-legged wading birds of the heron family stalked over the shallows in the stream.  An hour’s paddling brought the canoe to the mouth of the river, where camp was made.  The water beside the camp was fresh, but the salt-water bays spread out for miles before them.

“Everything is easy now,” said Ned.  “These bays are in the Ten Thousand Islands and lead to the head waters of the rivers of the coast.  We may get tangled up in these keys, aground on the flats or cornered up in some of the bays and perhaps lose a few days, but we’re safe to get out without hard work or trouble of any kind.”