"There ain't going to be no village till we come to trees," said Davie Paine slowly. "If there is, we can see it anyhow, and if there isn't, this road'll take us across the marsh. Once we're on the other side, we can leave the road and take to the hills." "There's an idea," Roger cried. "How about it, Bennie?" I nodded. Blodgett eagerly went first and the cook, apparently fearing that he was on his way to be served as a particularly choice tidbit at somebody else's banquet, came last. The rest of us just jostled along together. But Davie Paine, I noticed, held his head higher than I ever had seen it before; for Roger's appreciation of his sound common sense had pleased him beyond measure and had done wonders to restore his self-confidence. First there were interwoven bushes and vines beside the road, and then tall reeds and marsh grasses; now there was sand underfoot, now mud. But it was a better path by far than any we could have beaten out for ourselves, and we all--except the cook--were well pleased that we had taken it. The bushes and tall grasses, which shut us in, prevented our seeing the ocean behind us or the hills ahead, and the miasmic mist that we had noticed some time since billowed around our knees. But the stars were very bright above us, and phosphorescent creatures like fire-flies fluttered here and there, and, all things considered, we made excellent progress. As it had been Blodgett in his eternal peering and prowling who had found the path, so now it was Blodgett, bending low as he hurried at the head of our irregular line, who twice stopped suddenly and said that he had heard hoarse, distant calls. Each time, when the rest of us came up to him and listened, they had died away, but Blodgett now had lost his confident air. He bent lower as he walked and he peered ahead in a way that seemed to me more prowling and catlike than ever. As we advanced his uneasiness grew on him, until presently he turned and raised his hand. The five of us crowded close together behind him and listened intently. For a while, as before, we heard nothing; then suddenly a new, strange noise came to our ears. It was an indistinct sound of trampling, and it certainly was approaching. The cook grasped my arm. "'Fo' de good Lo'd!" he muttered, "dey's voices!" Now I, too, and all the others heard occasional grunts and gutturals. We dared not flee back to the beach, for there or in the open marshy land we could not escape observation, and since it had taken us a good half hour to carry our boat to its hiding-place, it would be utter folly to try to launch it and put out to sea. Not knowing which way to turn, the six of us stood huddled together like frightened sheep, in the starlight, in the centre of that great marsh, with the white mist sweeping up around the bushes, and waited for we knew not what. As the noise of tramping and the guttural voices grew louder, Blodgett gasped, "Look! In heaven's name, look there!"