Abe shook his head. “Sounds more like a b’ar, to me,” he put in. “Or it might even be a panther. At any rate it wouldn’t do a mite o’ harm to have a fire on the levee tonight. That’d keep the skeeters away as well as the varmints.” They gathered more wood, and after supper built a slow-burning fire of half-green chunks on the levee, close to where the boat was moored. Tad gave Poke a piece of sugar cane to worry, and watched the delighted little bear suck the sweetness out of the stick as if it had been a bottle. They all chewed on the succulent joints of cane till the dark had settled over the river. Then with the usual good-nights they spread their blankets and turned in. “It’s hot tonight,” Abe yawned. “I’m goin’ to give you boys more room.” And so saying, he took his bed up to the raised deck forward. In two minutes everything was quiet, aboard. But Tad did not sleep. He was thinking of the footprint they had found that morning, and of the noise in the cane. In spite of all the reassuring things he could tell himself, the thought persisted in his mind that it was not a cow he had heard--nor a bear--nor even a panther. It was a man. CHAPTER XVII Sleep overcame Tad at last, but when it did it was a strange, restless slumber, full of dreams. He seemed to be running, leaden-footed, down the bed of an interminable brook, where at every step the deep, black mud sucked horribly at his heels. He struggled forward, his heart almost bursting with effort, and always behind him he could hear the fierce, wild baying of dogs. The black swamp grew firmer about him, and there in the surface of the mud he saw a huge track, broad, misshapen, with a great toe that looked half like a thumb. And suddenly the cry of the hounds ended in a whimper, and he was fleeing from a pack of huge black stooping shapes that ran through the woods on their hind legs--more silent--more terrible than dogs. He rushed on, stumbled, tried to get up, and found that all the strength had run out of his body. His pursuers were close upon him now, enormous in the dark, their long arms stretched to seize him. He tried to cry out, but no sound would come from his throat. Then through the fringes of his dream he heard Poke give a frightened squeal that turned into a growl, and there was a low, startled oath somewhere close by. And suddenly Tad found himself awake. He was sitting upright on his blanket in the flatboat, clutching what he realized was the handle of the ax. Above him, black against the red glow of the fire, loomed a vast ape-like figure, and there were half a dozen others moving on the levee and in the boat. He found his voice, then.