“I wish you could come,” said the manager.  “For we are going into the wilds, and we may need your help.”

“Into the wilds?” echoed Mr. Sneed.  “Do you think it safe?”

“I don’t know whether it is or not,” responded Mr. Pertell, and he spoke half seriously.  “But we have to go to get the views I want.  I hope none of you refuse to come.”

No one did, but there was not a little apprehension.

“Those two girls went into the wilds—­and did not come back, you know,” said Ruth to Alice in a low voice.

“Oh, don’t think of it,” was the rejoinder.  “We are a large party—­we can’t get lost.”

But neither Ruth nor Alice realized what was before them.

CHAPTER XX

LOST

Pushing her bow up sluggish streams—­up rivers that flowed under arching trees, heavy with the gray moss, went the Magnolia.  The party of moving picture players had been on the move for three days now, without a stop for taking of pictures, save those Russ made of the negroes cutting wood for the boilers.  No dramas were to be made until they reached a certain wild and uninhabited part of Florida, of which Mr. Pertell had heard, and which he thought would be just right for his purpose.

They had left the vicinity of the alligator hunt, and were pushing on into the interior.  In reality it was not so many miles from Sycamore, but it seemed a great way, so lonely was it in the palm forests and cypress swamps.

“Seems to me this is lonely enough to suit anyone,” observed Miss Pennington as she sat on deck with the others, and looked up stream.

“It surely is—­I feel like screaming just to know that there is something alive around here,” added Miss Dixon.

“Go ahead!” laughed Russ.  “No one will stop you!”

“Really the silence does seem to get on one’s nerves,” put in Mr. Towne.  “It—­er—­interferes with—­er—­thinking, you know.”

“Didn’t know you ever indulged in that habit!” chaffed Paul.

“Oh, why—­er—­my deah fellah!  Of course I do—­at times.  I find—­I really find I have to give a great deal of consideration—­at times—­to the suit samples my tailor sends me.  And really I shall not be sorry to get back to deah old N’York and renew my wardrobe.”

“If he has any more suits he’ll have to get a man to look after them,” remarked Alice.

“Oh, hush!” chided Ruth.

Then silence once more settled down over the company on the upper deck of the Magnolia.  An awning protected them from the hot sun, and really it was very pleasant traveling that way.  Of course it was lonesome and the solitude was depressing.  For days they would see nothing save perhaps the boat of some solitary fisherman, or alligator hunter.

Occasionally they saw some of the big saurians themselves, as they slipped into the water from some log, or sand bar, on the approach of the steamer.  Now and then some wild water fowl would dart across the bows of the boat, uttering its harsh cries.