A blue heron almost as tall as a man looked up from his frog-hunting and rose on great silent wings, flapping away to the depths of the cypress swamp. There were no songs of birds to break the funereal stillness. Even the water was still. If it had any movement, it was so sluggish that the eye could hardly detect it. Abe had stopped rowing and stood on the fore deck looking about him. The quietness affected all of them strangely. They felt like speaking in whispers. “Gosh,” murmured Allen, “ain’t it purty here! Spooky, though.” “It’s purty, right enough,” Abe answered. “But it’s not the Mississippi. We’ve got into a slack-water, somehow.” “That’s a fact,” said Allen. “It don’t seem quite like the river, does it? Jiminy Pete! Look a’ thar! They’s more alligators in this place than catfish in our creek back home.” The roaring challenge of a bull ’gator came from down the reach, and others answered all along the bank. Shattering the quiet of the place and reëchoing from the tall cypresses, the sound was almost terrifying in its intensity. Hardly had it died away when the boys heard the report of a gun, close at hand, and a puff of blue smoke drifted out from behind a little point. Allen would have rushed under the shelter to get his own fowling-piece, but Abe held up a warning hand. “Wait,” he said in a low voice. “That wasn’t meant fer us. Here he comes, now.” Past the point there shot a long, low dugout canoe. A man knelt a little aft of the middle, driving her along with short, quick paddle strokes. As he caught sight of the broadhorn he paused with paddle lifted, as if in astonishment. Then he changed his course and came slowly toward them. They saw as he approached that he was a handsome young fellow, with olive skin and long dark hair--a typical Creole of the river parishes. In the canoe just in front of him lay a fine silver-mounted shotgun, and beside it they saw the snowy white plumage of an egret. “Howdy, friend,” said Abe. “Could you tell us about whar we might be, now?” The youth looked them over calmly and a trifle patronizingly. “I thing you come from up the big riv’,” said he. “_Mais_, you done los’ the way, huh? You mus’ come t’rough the cut. Dat ain’ righd. The Mississip’, she make a beeg ben’. This w’ere you are, it is Bayou Tante Lisette.” “Thank ye,” said Abe. “I reckon that means we’ve jest got to pull back.” He dipped deeply with the starboard oar and swung the blunt nose of the flatboat around. “Adieu,” said the Creole with a grave little bow, and turned his canoe down the bayou, in the opposite direction. Around the tortuous bends Abe retraced his course. It was hard rowing, and he had very little sympathy from the rest of the crew. “Seems to me,” snickered Allen, “I recall a feller up near the Wabash mouth that got a smart answer when he asked whar’bouts he was. Pore devil of a mover, he was, too, with a hull family o’ kids--not a tip-top, high-rollin’ river hand like you.”