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 alligators—­alligators on all sides.  They were surrounded by them now, and the girls would no more have gotten out of the boat, even if there had been a bridge nearby on which to walk to shore, than they would have dived overboard.

“Oh, isn’t it awful!” gasped Ruth, covering her eyes with her hands.

“Can they get at us?” asked Alice, more practically.

“Not if you stay in the boat, I should say,” declared Paul.  But he was not altogether sure in his own mind.

As for Russ he said nothing.  But he was busy focusing the small moving picture camera on the unusual scene.  True, he had views of the saurians at the alligator farm near St. Augustine, but this was different.  The views he was now getting showed the big, repulsive creatures in their natural haunts.

“This sure is a big piece of luck!” cried Jed Moulton, as he brought his rifle up from the bottom of the boat.  “It is a rare bit of luck!  I didn’t know there was so many ’gators in this neighborhood!”