Paddling, and drinking the open air, he blinked, dazzled, until he could gaze about. What good fortune that he had learned to swim! However, he saw nothing but the surface of the water, and the two shores, and the dug-out, bottom-side up and looking like a big narrow turtle. Above him the river curved widely, and around the curve was the steamboat, probably; but he was alone. Nobody had floated down with him. He was nearer to the low shore than to the high, so he must have been carried diagonally by a cross current. His feet touched bottom again, and he started to wade, on tiptoe――when he suddenly bethought himself. He struck out for the boat, held to it with one hand and groped under it with the other, and hauled out the haversack. There might be something in it to wear or eat, if the water had not spoiled all the stuff. He felt somewhat like Robinson Crusoe; and pushing the heavy haversack he headed for the nearer shore. The water shoaled rapidly, until waist-high and knee-deep in the mud he forged along, lugging the haversack (which weighed about a ton!), until he emerged at what he had supposed was a low meadow. It had looked like level grass; but he discovered that it wasn’t land, after all. It was a regular swamp; with coarse cane and grass higher than his head, and underfoot a squashy bog in which he sank to his knees again. And the mosquitoes! And the damp heat! Shucks, and twice shucks! But there were no two ways, now. He toiled manfully on, lugging the precious haversack, shoving through the jungle, plumping in the soft boggy turf, not able to see a thing except the cane and grasses, and the mosquitoes that ate him, with the sun boiling him and his feet like lead. It seemed to be a tremendously wide swamp. He kept a sharp lookout for snakes, and tried his best to make a bee-line by sighting on some tree-tops that, from occasional open spots, he could glimpse far before. His breath came in gasps, his heart thumped, the mosquitoes and the heat were awful, and the perspiration simply poured down his face. He was leaving the river behind, but when he got out of the swamp, then where would he be? Hurrah! He guessed that he was reaching the edge, at last. The bogginess was not so deep, and the jungle not so high. His head began to stick above the rushes; his shoulders followed, and he could see about him.