st, making each strip
about four or five inches long, and just wide enough to meet around
the end of an arrow. Binding these strips firmly, the arrows were
complete. Each was a slender, light stick of cedar, shod at one end
with a slender iron point, and bound around at the other, for a
distance of several inches, with the fur of the hare. Pushing one of
these into the mouth end of his blow gun, Sam showed his companions
that the fur completely filled the tube, so that when he should blow
in the end the arrow would be driven through and out with considerable
force.

Pointing the gun toward a tree a little way off, Sam blew, and in a
moment the arrow was seen sticking in the tree, its head being almost
wholly buried in the solid wood.

The boys all wanted to try the new guns, of course, and Sam permitted
them to do so, greatly to their delight, as long as the daylight
lasted. Then the manufacture of new arrows began, the boys working
earnestly now, because they were interested.

After awhile Sam took out his map and began pricking the course upon
it.

"I say, Sam," said Bob Sharp, "how do you do that?"

"How do I do what? Prick the map?"

"No, I mean how do you know where we are and which way we go?"

"That's just what I want to know," said Sid Russell.

"And me, too," chimed in Billy Bunker and Jake Elliott.

"Well, come here, all of you," replied Sam, "and I'll show you. We
started there, at camp Jackson,--you see, don't you, where the Coosa
and the Tallapoosa rivers come together and we are going down there,"
pointing to a spot on the map, "to the sea, or rather to the Bay near
Pensacola."

"Are we! Good! I never saw the sea," said Sid Russell, speaking faster
than any of the boys had ever heard him speak before.

"Yes, that is the place we're going to, and presently I'll tell you
what we're going for; but one thing at a time. You see the course is a
little west of south, nearly but not quite southwest. The distance, in
an air line is about a hundred and twenty-five miles: that is to say
Pensacola is about a hundred and ten miles further south than camp
Jackson, and about fifty miles further west."

"That would be a hundred and sixty miles then," said Billy Bowlegs.

"Yes," replied Sam, "it would if we went due south and then due west,
taking the base and perpendicular of a right angled triangle, instead
of its hypothenuse."

"Whew, what's all them words I wonder," exclaimed Billy.

"Well, I'll try