After a time my breath came easier, and I lay very still, trying to plan.  I had come no more than sixty feet from that swampy shore, and I knew this bank upon which I lay sprawled for I had fished from it many a time.  It was only a narrow, projecting tongue of swampy ground that reached out like a pointing finger into the dark waters.

It was this vicinity that was favored by the huge old 'gator locally known as Ol' Joe, and reputed to have eaten more than three men, yet it was this water I must swim, and there was no other way out.  It could be no more than a minute or two before either Chance Thorne or Joel Reese remembered the mud bar.

To walk back to the mainland was to invite capture, for already the search along the shore was nearing the connecting point.  Getting to my feet I hobbled across the mud bar to the far side.

There was a knifing pain in my side, and one leg was badly bruised and probably torn.  Ol' Joe was a chance I had to accept, wherever he was he would be sure to catch the scent of blood in the water.  On the other hand it old make the pursuers no more eager to investigate until daylight.

Walking into the dark water until it was chest-high, I struck out.  Swimming was something at which I'd always been handy, and I moved off into the water making almost no sound.  Despite the throbbing in my skull and the stiff, bruised muscles I must swim about two hundred yards into the swamp before there would be a place to land.

Taking each stroke by itself, neither thinking nor trying to plan beyond the other side, I swam steadily, keeping my mind away from Ol' Joe.

Behind me there was a shout of triumph and I knew they had found some tracks.  Glancing back I saw lanterns bobbing along the swamp shore.

Somewhere out here, and my swimming should have put me in a direct line with them, were a few old cypresses standing in the water.  They were heavy with Spanish moss and a tangle of old boughs and might offer a hide-out.  A few minutes later my hand struck an underwater root, then feeling around, caught a low-hanging limb.  Taking a good grip I pulled myself up out of the water.

The air was cold after the water and my teeth chattered.  From limb to limb I climbed until there was a place on some twisted limbs where I could make a nest for myself.  Removing my belt I belted myself around a branch of the tree and lay there in the darkness, teeth rattling with cold, mosquitoes swarming around.

The last thing I recalled was the lights along the shore line and then I must have slept or become unconscious for when I opened my eyes again the sky was gray in the east, and their campfires were large on the shore, waiting for daylight and serious search.