CHAPTER XXII

Dripping from the bog-holes and lathered with mud, it was the mystery of Breault’s noiseless presence somewhere near him in the still night that drew Peter continually deeper into the swamp.

Half a dozen times he caught the scent of him in a quiet air that seemed only now and then to rise up in his face softly, as if stirred by butterflies’ wings.  Always it came from ahead, and Peter’s mind worked swiftly to the decision that where Breault was there also would be Nada and Jolly Roger.  Yet he caught the scent of neither of these two, and that puzzled him.

Many times he found himself at the edge of the black lip of water, but never quite at the right time to see a shadow in its darkness, or hear the sound of Breault’s pole.

But in the swamp, as he went on, he saw nothing but shadow, and heard weird and nameless sounds which made his blood creep, even though his courage was now full-grown within him.

He was not frightened at the ugly sputter of the owls, as in the days of old.  Their throaty menace and snapping beaks did not stop him nor turn him aside.  The slashing scrape of claws in the bark of trees and the occasional crackling of brush were matters of intimate knowledge, and he gave but little attention to them in his eagerness to reach those who had gone ahead of him.  What troubled him, and filled his eyes with sudden red glares, were the oily gurgles of the pitfalls which tried to suck him down; the laughing madness of muck that held him as if living things were in it, and which spluttered and coughed when he freed himself.

Half blinded at times, so that even the black shadows were blotted out, he went on.  And at last, coming again to the edge of the stream, he heard a new kind of sound—­the slow, steady dipping of Breault’s pole.

He hurried on, finding harder ground under his feet, and came noiselessly abreast of the man on his raft of cedar timbers.  He could almost hear his breathing.  And very faintly he could see in the vast gloom a shadow—­a shadow that moved slowly against the background of a still deeper shadow beyond.

But there was no scent of Nada or Jolly Roger, and whatever desire had risen in him to make himself known was smothered by caution and suspicion.  After this he did not go ahead of Breault, but kept behind him or abreast of him, within sound of the dipping pole.  And every minute his heart thumped expectantly, and he sniffed the new air for signs of those he most desired to find.

Dawn was breaking in the sky when they came out of the swamp, and the first flush of the sun was lighting up the east when Breault headed his improvised craft for the sandbar upon which Nada and McKay had rested many hours before.