meadows almost anywhere, but Dick was still an invalid and Ned was always anxious about him.  Six miles from the camp, where he had left Dick with Tom, Ned found a good camping site, marked by a freak palmetto with a trunk that branched into two stems about midway up.  The ground was covered with palmetto scrub, which Ned examined carefully for rattlesnakes, after which he got out his fly-rod and caught a mess of fish for supper.  On his return to camp the lynx sprang into the canoe, seized one of the fish and growled so fiercely that Ned thought best to let him keep it. [Illustration:  “NED FOUND A GOOD CAMPING SITE MARKED BY A FREAK PALMETTO”]

“Fresh water is all out, Dick,” said Ned that night, “so I’ll start at daylight and go back to the river and fill up.  I’ll take it slowly and be here about noon.  Then we can start out and make easy work of being in the new camp long before sun-down.”

“Ned, I can paddle all right, and I’m going to help.  I am sick of being a baby.”

“Go ’way, chile, you make me tired.  Don’t forget that I’m your doctor,” replied Ned.

“Do you see any chance of getting to the coast?”

“Yes; pretty sure thing.  I found a deep channel near the camp with some porpoises playing in it, and I think it’s near the head of one of the big coast rivers.  I am almost certain it’s Rodgers River.”

[Illustration:  “THE LYNX SPRANG INTO THE CANOE AND SEIZED ONE OF THE FISH”]

Ned was a tired boy when the day’s work was done and the young explorers were settled in the new camp, but a night’s sleep braced him up so that he agreed to his chum’s plan to make a dash for the coast, for Dick had said: 

“What is the use of losing a lot of time in prospecting for a soft spot for me to sleep?  We can be on the coast to-night within sight of houses and help if we need it, which we don’t, for I’m going to do my share of the paddling.  I know that coast and you don’t, so I’ll naturally be boss.”

When the little canoe had been loaded with all their stores and trophies, and the boys were ready for their final trip, Tom stepped gravely aboard, and seating himself in the bow, turned to Ned with an expression which Dick translated as: 

“I am here, you may start the engine.”

Ned dipped his paddle deeply in the water, that with his every stroke flowed more swiftly.  The banks became well defined, and although the stream was so crooked that it flowed by turns to every point of the compass, its general trend was to the west.  The river broadened and the channel deepened, the forest on the banks became more heavily timbered, and the boys recognized the beautiful Rodgers River.  Curlews and water-turkeys watched them from the trees; herons flew lazily up from the shoals as the canoe approached; porpoises, going out with the tide, rolled their backs out of water and gave sniffs of affright as they saw the canoe beside them.  The fin of a great shark, longer than their canoe, cut the water