some--being away from civilization so
long," complained Miss Pennington one day. "We can't get any mail, or
anything."

"Who wants mail, when you can sit out on deck and look at such a scene as
that?" asked Alice, pointing to a view down a beautiful river.

"Don't you want to come for a row?" asked Paul of Alice, after luncheon.

"I think so," she answered. "Where is Ruth?"

"We'll all go together," he proposed. "Russ wants to get a few pictures,
and Jed Moulton is going along to show us where there are some likely
spots for novel scenes."

"Of course I'll come!" cried Alice, enthusiastically, as she went to her
stateroom to make ready.

A little later the four young people, with the alligator hunter, set out
in a big rowboat. Russ took with him a small moving picture camera, as he
generally did, even when he had no special object in view.

They rowed up the stream in which the _Magnolia_ was resting, her bow
against a fern bank, and presently the party was in a solitude that was
almost oppressive. There was neither sign nor sound of human being, and
the steamer was lost to sight around a bend in the stream.

"Isn't it wonderful here?" murmured Ruth.

"It certainly is," agreed Russ who, with Paul, was rowing.

"It sure is soothin'," said Jed. "Many a time when I ain't had no luck,
and feel all tuckered out, I sneak off to a place like this and I feel
jest glad to be alive."

He put it crudely enough, but the others understood his homely
philosophy.

They rowed slowly, pausing now and then to gather some odd flower, or to
look at some big tree almost hidden under the mass of Spanish moss.

Alice, who had gone to the bow, was looking ahead, when suddenly she
called out:

"Oh, look at the funny logs! They're bobbing up and down all over. See!"

Jed and the others looked to where she pointed, toward a sand bar in the
stream. Then the old hunter called out:

"Logs! Them ain't logs! Them's alligators! We've run into a regular nest
of 'em! I'm glad I brought my gun along!"

"Oh! Alligators!" gasped Ruth, as one thrust his long and repulsive head
from the water, just ahead of the boat.

CHAPTER XIX

INTO THE WILDS

Had there been any convenient mode of running away Ruth and Alice would
certainly have taken advantage of it just then. But they were out in a
boat, in the middle of a wide, sluggish stream, and all about them,
swimming, diving, coming up and crawling over a long sand-bar, were
allig