and sell the hides.  Ned paid the Indian for his time and made him a present, in addition, of an outfit of clothing from hat to shoes, without any objection from Charley.  But when Dick came to settle with Johnny there was trouble.  For Johnny refused to take any pay and said that if Dick paid him for coming to where Ned was he would have to pay Dick for carrying him to where Charley was.  Ned had to chip in before Johnny could be persuaded to take the pay he had earned.  Ned had a better equipment than Dick and a much larger lot of stores.  These he shared with Johnny, so that the boy was provided with more luxuries than are often carried on an alligator hunt.

When the boys were about to start away in the morning, Johnny told them that Tommy wanted to go to Osceola’s camp for a day or two, and he proposed that the boys come with them.  Johnny said that if they went to the Indian camp with Tommy the Indians would talk and the boys could learn a lot of Seminole in two or three days, enough to pull them through in their visits to other camps.  The chance was too good to be lost, and the long, heavy Indian canoe was followed down the Glades by the light Canadian canoe of the boys.

Ned and Dick were pretty husky youths, and as their canoe didn’t weigh more than one-fourth that of the one just ahead of them, they thought they were in for a picnic.  Very soon they changed their minds.  Sometimes they could paddle, but generally they used their paddles as poles.  They had one oar for pushing, which helped them a little.  A light push sent the canoe forward, but when the push ended so did the motion.  It took a stronger push to start the Seminole canoe, but the stroke was much longer, and when the stroke ended the motion continued.  The boys were game and wouldn’t admit that it tired them to keep up.  But when a strand of heavy saw-grass had to be crossed they found trouble to burn.  The round, heavy wooden cylinder of Seminole make slid slowly through the tall, stiff, saw-edged mass.  But the light canoe was thrown back from each stroke by the elastic grass.  Dick never liked to be beaten, so he went overboard and floundered along the trail ahead of the canoe, dragging it by the painter, while Ned got out and pushed from behind the stern.  The sharp, serrated edges of the grass cut their faces and lacerated their hands.  No air was stirring at the foot of those tall spears, and Dick thought of his hours in the fire room of the Southern steamer.  Sometimes a big, deadly cotton-mouth, the ugliest snake in the world, swam in front of Dick as he struggled forward, but though his flesh quivered he said nothing lest he make Ned nervous.  Then occasionally a poisonous brown moccasin rose out of the mud which the canoe stirred up, and, with uplifted head and open mouth, threatened Ned as he stumbled behind the craft, but he was silent about it lest he worry the chum who was new to the country.  The saw-grass strand was only two hundred yards across, although it seemed a mile to the boys, who made light of it when they reached the other canoe, but their bleeding hands, torn by the terrible grass, told another story.