After a while he knew he was out of earshot of the watcher by the road and could move faster. The sun rose, bringing beauty to the woods. He heard negroes singing, and soon a big mule-cart creaked by, with half a dozen plantation hands on their way to the fields, and a white overseer riding abreast. Birds made a background of music for all the other sounds of the waking day. Tad passed a bend in the road and worked himself down into the bushes that fringed the ditch beside it. He looked long and listened carefully in both directions. Then with his heart in his mouth, he made the dash for the opposite side. Three seconds, and it was done. The brush whipped shut behind him. He waited a little to see if any one was in pursuit, then turned and pushed his way through the tangle of vines and creepers that crowned the edge of the bluff. There, a hundred feet and more below, was the vast, muddy tide of the river that had made him feel so lonely and depressed three short weeks ago. How he welcomed it now! Spread out in a great sunlit panorama, he saw the little arks and keel-boats go gliding down, no bigger than chips on the yellow flood. And those tiny black figures, like ants, that worked at the sweeps or sat about the breakfast fires--those were his friends. He belonged to their brotherhood now. Old Trader Magoon and the jolly red-bearded captain from St. Louis, big, brave, awkward, kind-hearted Abe, and even Allen, with his human failings--they would all fight for him. Something like a sob rose in his throat, and he had to choke it back. What was the matter with him anyway? It must be hunger. He remembered that he hadn’t eaten much for two days. Well, it was time he was moving. With another look around, to make sure no one watched him from the road, he started scrambling down the face of the bluff. CHAPTER XV As he descended, Tad could see the levee, below, and half a mile to the northward the huddled houses of Natchez-under-the-Hill. There was the big steamboat landing, piled with freight, and beyond it the swarming flatboat fleet, so close, now, that he almost fancied he could pick out the little _Katy Roby_ at her moorings. Clinging by roots and creepers, sliding from one grass tuft to the next, the boy went swiftly down. At the foot of the steep slope was a narrow marshy tract hemmed in by the levee. There was no road except the footway along the levee top, but a few shanties were scattered here and there--the cabins of free negroes, Tad thought--and among the evil-looking pools of green water, paths ran from one clump of great mossy live oaks to the next. He followed one of these, skirting a stagnant pond where the whole surface was covered with a weedy scum. An alligator moved lazily, thrusting up its long snout within a yard of Tad’s heel, and great swarms of mosquitoes rose on all sides to meet him. He broke into a run.