The others nodded and waited. A long cry, quavering at first, and then rising to a fierce top note to die away later in a ferocious, wolfish whine came through the fog. It was uttered by many throats, and in the uncanny, whitish gloom it seemed to be on all sides of them. Then shouts and shots both ceased and the heavy silence came again. "Now is our time," whispered Henry. "Paul, steer southward. Jim, you and Tom row, and Sol and I will be ready with the guns. Keep your heads down as low as you can." Jim Hart and Tom Ross took the oars, pulling them through the water with extreme caution and slowness. All knew that sharp ears were listening in the flooded forest, and the splash of oars would bring the war canoes at once. But they were determined that the fog which was such a help to their enemies should be an equal help to them also. Slowly the heavy boat crept through the water. Paul, at the tiller, steered with judgment and craft, and his was no light task. Now and then low boughs were lapped in the water and bushes submerged to their tops grew in the way. To become tangled in them might be fatal and to scrape against them would be a signal to their enemies, but Paul steered clear every time. They had gone perhaps fifty yards when Henry gave a signal to stop and Jim and Tom rested on their oars. Then they heard a burst of firing behind them, and a smile of saturnine triumph spread slowly but completely over the face of Shif'less Sol. "They're shootin' at the place whar we wuz, an' whar we ain't now," he whispered to Henry. "Yes," Henry whispered back, "they haven't found out yet that we've left, but they are likely to do it pretty soon. I hope now that this fog will hang on just as thick as it can. Start up again, boys." "'Twould be funny," whispered Sol, "ef the savages should find us an' chase us right into the bosoms o' the Spaniards." "Yes," replied Henry, "and for that reason I think we'd better bend around a circle and then go up stream. I'll tell Paul to steer that way." They went on again, creeping through the white darkness; fifty yards or so at a time, and then a pause to listen. Henry judged that they were about a half mile from their original anchorage, when the solemn note of an owl arose, to be answered by a similar note from another point. "They've discovered our departure," he whispered, "and they're telling it to each other. I imagine that their war canoes will now come in a kind of half circle toward the center of the river. They'll guess that we won't retreat toward the land, because then we might be hemmed in." "No doubt of it," replied Sol, "and I think we'd better pull off toward the north now. Mebbe we kin give 'em the slip."