“I know I ain’t beautiful,” said Long Jim thoughtfully, “an’ I don’t know ez I want to be, but ef any woman wuz to marry me she’d most likely believe whatever I told her, bein’ ez I hev a truthful countenance, but ez fur you, Sol, anybody kin tell by lookin’ at you that ef you wuz to ketch in this river a little cat-fish six inches long you’d tell them that didn’t know that it wuz a whale.”

“Seems to me,” said Tom Ross, “that I wuz waked up kinder suddint a few hours ago.  I wuz in the middle uv a most bee-yu-ti-ful nap, and I know right whar I stopped it.  I’m goin’ back an’ pick up that nap at the exact place whar I left off.”

Without another word he pulled his blanket over him and stretched himself on a seat.  In a minute or two he was sound asleep.  Tom Ross was a veteran campaigner.  He not only knew what to do, but he could and would do it.

“Paul, you and Jim follow him,” said Henry, “I’ll keep what’s left of the watch with Sol.”

Jim was treading the easy path of slumber in five minutes, but it took Paul at least ten to pass through the gates.  Henry and Sol sat in the boat, silent but watchful.

“We’re between two fires,” whispered Henry at last.  “I don’t think that war party will give up just yet, and maybe we’d better stick here in the woods for a while, on the chance that they think we belong to the Spanish force and have rejoined it.”

“We’ve got to stay in hidin’ fur a spell, that’s shore,” said Shif’less Sol.  “We might stick here all day.  We kin overtake the Spaniards any time, cause we have only one road to foller an’ that’s the river.”

Henry nodded and they settled back to the watch and silence.  Their three comrades stretched on seats, lockers, or the boat’s bottom, slept soundly, and they could hear their regular breathing.  But they heard nothing else save the light lapping of the water against the tree trunks.

Dawn came, golden and beautiful.  Tom Ross opened his eyes.

“Anything happened?” he asked.

“No,” replied Henry, “and we are not going to move yet.  Sleep on.”

Tom closed his eyes again, and in a minute was back in the pleasant land of slumber.  The other two did not awake and Henry and Sol still did not stir.  From the leafy arbor in which “The Galleon” was moored, they were intently watching the surface of the river.  An hour passed and the sun rose higher and higher, flooding the surface of the great stream with golden beams.

“Do you see anything, Henry?” asked Sol.

“Yes, I think there’s a canoe among the trees on the opposite shore.”

“I reckoned that I saw it, too, but I wuzn’t certain.  Must be a scout canoe.”

“Do you see anything to the southward, Sol?”

“I reckoned that I saw somethin’ thar, too, an’ I took it fur smoke.”

“The Spanish camp, of course.”

“O’ course.”

“And I think the Indians are spying upon it.  They are quite sure now that we were a part of the Spanish force.”