e saw a moving thing. It rode out of the dark and brushed him.
It touched him with soft fingers and he drew them to him. A water
hyacinth, and its purple spike topped his head as he stood waist-deep.
So cool its leaves, and the dripping bulbs that he pressed them to his
bloody cheek. He sank his teeth into them for that coolness on his
parched tongue. The spongy bulb was sweet; it exhaled odorous
moisture. He seized it ravenously. It carried sweet water, redolent of
green forest swamps!

He dragged at another floating lily, sought under the leaves for the
buoyant bulb. A drop or two of the fresh water a man could press from
each!

Like a starving animal he moved in the shoals, seeing more drifting
garden clumps. And then a dark object that did not drift. He felt for
it slowly, and then straightened up, staring about.

A flat-bottomed bayou skiff, and in it the oars, a riverman's
blanket-roll of greasy clothes, and a tin box! He knew the box. On one
end, in faded gilt, was the name "B. Tedge." Rogers had seen it on the
grimy shelf in the pilothouse on the _Marie Louise_. He felt for the
rope; the skiff was barely scraping bottom. Yes, they had moored it
here--they must be camped on the sands of Au Fer, awaiting the dawn.

A boat? He didn't know what a Texas cowman could do with a boat on an
alien and unknown shore, but he slipped into it, raised an oar, and
shoved back from the sandy spit. At least he could drift off Au Fer's
waterless desolation. Tedge would kill him to-morrow when he found him
there; because he knew Tedge had fired the _Marie_ for the insurance.

So he poled slowly off. The skiff drifted now. Rogers tried to turn to
the oar athwart, and awkwardly he stumbled. The oar seemed like a roll
of thunder when it struck the gunwale.

And instantly a hoarse shout arose behind him. Tedge's voice--Tedge
had not slept well. The gaunt cattle burning or choking in the salt
tide, or perhaps the lilies of Bayou Boeuf--anyhow, he was up with a
cry and dashing for the skiff. In a moment Rogers saw him.

The Texas man began driving desperately on the oars. He heard the
heavy rush of the skipper's feet in the deepening water. Tedge's voice
became a bull-like roar as the depth began to check him. To his waist,
and the slow skiff was but ten yards away; to his great shoulders, and
the clumsy oarsman was but five.

And with a yell of triumph Tedge lunged out swimming. Whoever the
fugitive, he was hopeless with the oa