etto wigwams.

By the swamp the night darkened. Carl had thrown himself upon the
grass now, his white, haggard face buried upon his arm. Back there
scarcely a mile to the east lay the camp of the traders. In the
morning they would ride into the Indian camp saddled with bright beads
and colored calicoes. In the morning--Carl shuddered and lay very
quiet, fighting again the ghastly torment that had racked and driven
him into the melancholy solitude of the Everglades. Now the firelit
palmetto roof of the wigwam he knew to be Diane's seemed somehow, to
his distorted fancy, redder than the others--the color of blood.
There, too, was the wigwam of Keela, bringing taunting desire.

A crowd of Seminoles rode into camp and, dismounting, led their horses
away. Carl watched them gather about the steaming sof-ka kettles on
the fires, handing the spoon from mouth to mouth. One, a tall, broad
young warrior in tunic and trousers and a broad sombrero--disappeared
in a wigwam on the fringe of camp.

A great wave of dizziness and burning nausea swept over Carl. Again he
was conscious of the taut, over-strung ligament droning, droning in his
head. The camp ahead became a meaningless blur of sinister scarlet
fire, of bloodred wigwams and dusky figures that seemed to dance and
lure and mock. The wild wind that bent the grasses, the horrible
persistent hoot of the owl in the cypress tree, the night noises of the
black swamp to the west, all mocked and urged and whispered of things
unspeakable.

The camp fell quiet. A black moonless sky brooded above the dying camp
fires. Not until this wild world of swamp and Indian seemed asleep did
the man in the grass stir.

Silently then he crept forward upon hands and knees until he had passed
the first of the Indian wigwams. Here he dropped for a silent interval
of caution into shadow and lay there scarcely breathing. On toward the
door of Diane's shelter he crept and once more lay inert and quiet.

Thunder rumbled disquietingly off to the east, The wind was rising over
the Glades with a violent rustle of grass and leaves. Now that his arm
was nerved at last to its terrible task, it behooved him to hurry, ere
the rain and thunder stirred the camp.

Noiselessly he crawled forward again. As he did so a ragged dart of
lightning glinted evilly in his eyes. With a leap something bounded
from the shadows behind him and bore him to the ground.

In the thick pall of darkness, he fough