After a breakfast of quail and wild cassava they rode on, Keela
on Themar's horse. Her own obediently followed.
An hour later they came to an aquatic jungle haunted by noisome
reptiles. Here fallen trees and a matted underbrush of poisonous vines
lay submerged in dank black water. Cypress gloomed in forbidding
shadow above the stagnant water; the swamp itself was rife with
horrible quacks and croaks and off somewhere the distant bellow of an
alligator.
So dense and dark this terrible haunt of snake and bird and brilliant
lizard that Carl shuddered, but Keela, dismounting, tethered her horses
to the nearest tree and struck off boldly across a narrow trail of dry
land above the level of the water. Carl followed. Presently the
matted jungle thinned and they came to a rude foot-bridge made of
twisted roots. It led to the first of a series of fertile islands
which threaded the terrible swamp with a riot of color. Here royal
poinciana flared gorgeously beside the orange-colored blossoms of wild
cassava, and hordes of birds flamed by on brilliant wings.
Through rude avenues of palm and pine and cypress, through groves of
wild orange and banana fringed with mulberry and persimmon trees, over
rustic bridges which led from island to island, they came at last to a
larger hummock and the wild, vine-covered log lodge of Mic-co, the
Indians' white friend.
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