"If I'd known you were going to moon under a tree and
whistle through that infernal flute half the time, I'd never have
suggested camping. Are you coming along to-night or not?"
"No. I've murdered enough wild turkeys now."
Sherrill plunged off swampwards with the guides.
Left to himself Carl laid aside his flute and sat very quiet, staring
at the cloud-haunted moon which hung above the Glades. He had been
drinking and gaming heavily for weeks. Now floundering deeper and
deeper into the mire of debt and dissipation, forced to a fevered
alertness by distrust of all about him, he found the weird gloom of the
Everglades of a piece with the blackness of his mood. For days he had
taken wild chances that horrified Sherrill inexpressibly; drinking
clear whiskey in the burning white tropical sunlight, tramping off into
trackless wilds without a guide, conducting himself, as Sherrill
aggrievedly put it, with the general irrationality of a drunken madman.
"The climate or a moccasin will get you yet!" exclaimed Sherrill
heatedly. "And it will serve you right. Or you'll get lost. And to
lose your way in this infernal swamp is sure death. They used to enter
runaway niggers who came here, on the undertaker's list. I swear I
won't tell your aunt if you do disappear.
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