g nearer and nearer to his face, and
they were fluttering with eagerness. He felt a sucking, drawing,
stinging sensation on one of his wrists, and he believed one of those
fiendish vampire mouths had fastened there.

He swayed his body, he tried to move his feet, but he seemed rooted to
the ground. He did not have the strength to drag himself from that fatal
spot and from the grasp of the vine.

It seemed that hours passed. His senses were in a maze, and the whole
world was reeling and romping around him. The trees became a band of
giant demons, winking, blinking, grinning at him, flourishing their arms
in the air, and dancing gleefully on every side to the sound of wild
music that came from far away in the sky.

Then a smaller demon darted out from amid the trees, rushed at him,
clutched him, slashed, slashed, slashed on every side of him, dragged at
his collar, and panted in his ear:

"White boy fight--try to git away! His hands are free."

Was it a dream--was it an hallucination? No! his hands were free! He
tore at the clinging vines, he fought with all his remaining strength,
he struggled to get away from those clinging things.

All the while that other figure was slashing and cutting with something
bright, while the vine writhed and hissed like serpents in agony.

How it was accomplished Frank could never tell, but he felt himself
dragged free of the serpent vine, dragged beyond its deadly touch, and
he knew it was no dream that he was free!

A black mist hung before his eyes, but he looked through it and faintly
murmured:

"Socato, you have saved me!"

"Yes, white boy," replied the voice of the Seminole, "I found you just
in time. A few moments more and you be a dead one."

"That is true, Socato--that is true! I owe you my very life! I can never
pay you for what you have done!"

In truth the Indian had appeared barely in time to rescue Frank from the
vine, and it had been a desperate and exhausting battle. In another
minute the vine would have accomplished its work.

"I hear white boy cry out, and I see him run from this way," explained
the Seminole. "He look scared very much. Sailor men follow, and then I
come to see what scare them so. I find you."

"It was Providence, Socato. You knew how to fight the vine--how to cut
it with your knife, and so you saved me."

"We must git 'way from here soon as can," declared the Indian. "Bad
white men may not come back, and they may come back. They may want