“Yes,” replied Henry, “and that mischief is sure to be aimed at our people.”

They waited about a half hour longer and then picked their way back through the marsh to their own side of the peninsula.

It was now very late and Paul and Jim Hart were sound asleep in the boat, but Tom Ross was keeping vigilant guard.

“Wuz it them?” he asked.

“Yes,” replied Henry.  “They’re camped on the other side of this neck, and Braxton Wyatt is still with them.  There’s big mischief afoot and we’ve got to keep on following, waiting our chance, which, I think, will come.”

They did not start until noon the next day, in order to give the Spaniards a longer lead, and they rounded the neck of land very slowly lest they run into a trap.  But when the river lay straight before them again they beheld nothing.  They passed the point where the Spaniards had camped and saw the dead coals of their fires, but they did not stop, continuing instead their steady progress down stream.

It now grew hot upon the water.  They had come many hundreds of miles since the start, and they were in a warmer climate.  The character of the vegetation was changing.  The cypress and the magnolia became frequent on the banks, and now and then they saw great, drooping live oaks.  The soil seemed to grow softer and the water was more deeply permeated with mud.  Although the flood was gone, the river spread out in places to a vast width, and even at its narrowest it was a gigantic stream.  Other great, lazy rivers poured in their volume from east and west.  Narrow, deep inlets, half-hidden in vegetation, extended from either side.  There were bayous, although the five had not yet heard the name, and many of them swarmed with fish.

The warm air was heavy and languorous and now Shif’less Sol confessed.

“I’m gittin’ too much o’ it, even fur a lazy man,” he said. “’Pears to me I’m always wantin’ to sleep.  Now, I like about sixteen hours sleepin’ out o’ the twenty-four, but when it comes to keepin’ awake jest long enough to eat three meals a day I ain’t in favor o’ it.”

“It must be a rich country, though,” said Tom Ross.  “No wonder them Spaniards want to keep it.”

That day they passed at some distance three canoes containing Indians, but the canoes showed no wish to come near and investigate.  Henry said that the Indians in them looked sprawling and dirty, unlike the alert, clean-limbed natives of the North.

“They probably belong,” said Paul, “to the Natchez tribe who were beaten into submission long ago by the French, and who doubtless lack energy anyhow.”

The Indian canoes went lazily on, and soon were lost to sight.  Now a serious problem arose.  They were approaching the settled parts of Louisiana.  It is true, it was only the thinnest fringe of white people extending along either shore of the river a short distance above New Orleans, but they were coming to a region in which they would be noticed, and they might have to explain their presence before they wished to do so.  Nor had they found any opportunity to capture Braxton Wyatt and his maps and plans.  Nevertheless, they hung so closely on the trail of Alvarez that every night and morning they could see the smoke of his camp fire.