I did look, and saw half a dozen alligators writhing and crawling in the noxious slime within a few feet of us.  I felt a sickening sensation, and for a moment I could not utter a word:  the Yankee produced his whisky-flask.

“Take a swallow of this,” said he; “but no, better wait till we are out of the swamp.  Stop a little till your heart beats quieter.  So, you are better now.  When you’ve made two or three such journeys with old Nathan, you’ll be quite another man.  Now—­forward again.”

A few minutes later we were out of the swamp, and looking over a field of palmettos that waved and rustled in the moonbeams.  The air was fresh, and once more we breathed freely.

“Now then,” said our guide, “a dram, and then in half an hour we are at the Salt Lick.”

“Where?” asked I.

“At the Salt Lick, to shoot a deer or two for supper.  Hallo! what is that?”

“A thunderclap.”

“A thunderclap!  You have heard but few of them in Louisiana, I guess, or you would know the difference betwixt thunder and the crack of a backwoodsman’s rifle.  To be sure, yonder oak wood has an almighty echo.  That’s James’s rifle—­he has shot a stag.—­There’s another shot.”

This time it was evidently a rifle-shot, but re-echoed like thunder from the depths of the immense forest.

“We must let them know that we’re still in whole skins, and not in the maw of an alligator,” said the old man, who had been loading his rifle, and now fired it off.

In half an hour we were at the Salt Lick, where we found our guide’s two sons busy disembowelling and cutting up a fine buck that they had killed, an occupation in which they were so engrossed that they scarce seemed to notice our arrival.  We sat down, not a little glad to repose after the fatigues and dangers we had gone through.  When hind and fore quarters, breast and back, were all divided in right huntsman-like style, the young men looked at their father.  “Will you take a bite and a sup here?” said the latter, addressing Carleton and myself, “or will you wait till we get home?”

“How far is there still to go?”

“How far?  With a good trotting horse, and a better road, three quarters of an hour would bring you there.  You may reckon it a couple of hours.”

“Then we would prefer eating something here.”

“As you will.”

Without more words, or loss of time, a haunch was cut off one of the hind-quarters; dry leaves and branches collected; and in one minute a fire was blazing brightly, the joint turning before it on a wooden spit.  In half an hour the party was collected round a roast haunch of venison, which, although eaten without bread or any of the usual condiments, certainly appeared to us to be the very best we had ever tasted.

* * * * *

THE ARISTOCRACY OF ENGLAND.