While saying this he was pushing her up to me, at the same time holding out a bag, or kind of traveling case, that she had dropped. I seized it with one hand, and her arm with the other. "Quick; go to camp," Smilax was saying. "Me get Echochee and give 'em chase up coast. Be back soon; you wait there." He had taken to the water again and was making for the Indian woman, who I thought had started out to meet him. So I knew he would rescue her, as surely as he was six and a half feet of muscle and endurance. The camp had become thoroughly aroused by now, and lights were everywhere. Hoping to reassure Sylvia, I whispered as Smilax would have spoken: "Me friend; come quick!" Above the confusion we could hear the voice of Efaw Kotee bellowing: "Get the punts, you fools! Which way is she?" "On the mainland," someone yelled. "Then catch her," he bellowed again, with a string of blasphemous oaths. This decided her, and she whispered wildly: "Hurry! Take me where Tachachobee said!" We dashed through the forest, I leading, she close behind. Nor had we any time to spare, for before we had gone a hundred yards two quick shots rang out. It was "li'l crack-crack" speaking, I felt sure of it. Shots answered rapidly in threes and fours. The automatic spoke again, this time farther to the north, drawing more shots from the angry pursuers; but I knew that among trees so thick and in darkness so impenetrable Smilax and Echochee ran little chance of being hit. At the prairie, made vaguely lighter by a hazy, half grown moon, we crouched in the grass and waited. You have never, I suppose, been afraid to breathe, flattened against a wall, or huddled in a shadowy place, listening to the growls and grunts and sniffs of the man-beast hunting you? No, of course not. Men were now tearing through the forest like a herd of stampeded horses, shooting, yelling, cursing, while at brief intervals the automatic told them which way to go. Farther and farther the chase went, all the time following the coast and leading away from us till, after twenty minutes, the yells were hardly discernible and the shots sounded like faint little pops of a nursery gun. But they were as rapid as ever, telling us that the pursuit had in no way diminished. Smilax, undoubtedly master of the situation, would lead them on and on; either close by Big Cove so those aboard the _Whim_--had she made harbor--could take a hand, or finally lose them somewhere in the treacherous Everglades. Then he would came back for us. I felt no great uncertainty for Smilax and Echochee. I now straightened up--taking care that she should not see my face--and listened to satisfy myself that no one had stayed behind to be roaming in the forest near us, then whispered: "Come!" In silence, she following, we crossed the two mile space, and I drew a deep breath of thankfulness when we at last stepped beneath the black trees of my "island."