,
and, if so, the craft would now be lying on the opposite bank. A party
set off to skirt the edge of the lake and explore the further shores by
order of the sheriff, for this officer, summoned by telephone, had
come swiftly from the county town in an automobile, to the verge of the
swamp, there accommodated with a horse by a neighboring planter. And
then, Hoxer, lying on the elastic submerged brush, with only a portion
of his face above the surface of the water, watched in a speechless
ecstasy of terror the hue and cry progress on the hither side, his dog,
half dead from exhaustion, unconscious in his arms.

The moon, unmoved as ever, looked calmly down on the turmoil in the
midst of the dense woods. The soft brilliance illumined the long,
open vistas and gave to the sylvan intricacies an effect as of silver
arabesques, a glittering tracery amidst the shadows. But the lunar light
did not suffice. Great torches of pine knots, with a red and yellow
flare and streaming pennants of smoke, darted hither and thither as the
officer's posse searched the bosky recesses without avail.

Presently a new sound!--a crashing iteration--assailed the air. A
frantic crowd was beating the bushes about the margin of the lake and
the verges of the almost impenetrable cane-brake. Here, however, there
could be no hope of discovery, and suddenly a cry arose, unanimously
iterated the next instant, "Fire the cane-brake! Fire the cane-brake!"

For so late had come the rise of the river, so persistent had been the
winter's drought, so delayed the usual inundation of the swamp, that the
vegetation, dry as tinder, caught the sparks instantly, and the fierce
expedient to force the fugitive to leave his supposed shelter in the
brake, a vast woodland conflagration, was added to the terror of the
scene. The flames flared frantically upward from the cane, itself twenty
feet in height, and along its dense columns issued forth jets like
the volleyings of musketry from serried ranks of troops, the illusion
enhanced by continuous sharp, rifle-like reports, the joints of the
growth exploding as the air within was liberated by the heat of the
fire. All around this blazing Gehenna were swiftly running figures of
men applying with demoniac suggestion torches here and there, that a new
area might be involved. Others were mounted, carrying flaming torches
aloft, the restive horses plunging in frantic terror of the fiery
furnace in the depths of the brake, the l