watched--more with my senses than my eyes--I knew that he had worked his
head and shoulders out of our shelter, and was edging himself along at
the rate of perhaps a foot a minute. Soon I realized that he had
entirely gone; that, free of the saw-palmetto--a most difficult stuff in
which to move silently--he was topping the bank. I could imagine how he
glided now, alligator fashion, head downward to the water; and I could
almost feel the moment he slid noiselessly into it. I waited for the owl
call--"two times, then stop soft in middle."

And now an electric torch flashed where the sentry on my right was
posted, and I froze, wondering if it were directed at Smilax. But no
challenge came. In a very short interval it flashed again, and the
fellow called in military style:

"Post one, seven o'clock, and all's well!"

The voice at my left took it up:

"Post two, seven o'clock, and all's well!"

From somewhere beyond Sylvia's island the third guard called post three,
and silence followed. I was glad to find that they called their posts.
It told us that there were only three, and gave a very fair idea of
their positions. Of course, we could not hope, with this military
precaution, to have one of them fall asleep at a convenient moment.
Especially would this not happen with a newly placed guard--and these
fellows were on watch to-night for the first time, else we would have
seen them, or they us, when we came that morning. Smilax, also, would
have discovered them the night before. Sylvia and Echochee, therefore,
had just come under suspicion of intending to escape--and we were in the
nick of time, although I felt staggered by the job ahead of us.

After another wait the fellow at post one again flashed his torch--on
his watch, no doubt, because from time to time there were other flashes
and, after the last of these, he called half-past seven. That was good
for us, too--the half hours! Eight o'clock came, then half after, then
nine. The lights in the camp had been extinguished. A real owl hooted
mournfully somewhere back in the forest. I was waiting for post one to
be called again when a voice, not twelve inches from my face, whispered:

"All right; come; slow like me. When you think you can no go more slow,
then go two times as slow."

Had it not been for that last piece of advice I might have made a mess
of things, but by moving at first scarcely more than an inch a minute,
by distributing my feeling sense to every p