Scott waited till they had disappeared in the fog and then followed cautiously. Suddenly an idea came to him that made the cold chills run up his back. What if they should go over past Murphy and Murphy should mistake them for him? If they would just keep on talking it might be all right, but if they walked in silence Murphy would be almost certain to hail them.

He crept up as close behind them as he dared so that if the worst came he would be there to help Murphy. For the second time in his life he sorely regretted that he did not have a gun. If there was trouble, Murphy would probably be shot before he could get near enough to do anything. If he had only taken Murphy’s advice and his pistol he could at least cause a diversion even if he could not hit anything.

Joe had turned off to follow the track to the camp but the rest of them went steadily on down the beach directly toward Murphy. They had apparently exhausted their ideas in the talk around the camp fire for they had fallen silent now, just what Scott had dreaded. He thought they must be pretty close to Murphy now and he expected every instant to hear his voice. If they would only say something. A sudden inspiration came to him and he deliberately kicked a tree he was passing and stopped behind it. He was listening breathlessly.

“What was that?” Qualley asked in a quiet voice. “Did you hear anything?”

There was a pause and then Roberts answered, “Yes, I heard it. Must have been a pine cone dropping or those cowards out there on the schooner locking their back door.”

Scott heaved a sigh of relief. Certainly Murphy must have heard that if he was not asleep. It was not likely that a man would go to sleep under those circumstances, but the idea worried Scott and he knew that he could not feel comfortable again till he had joined Murphy and put him wise to the situation. It had never occurred to him before he left Murphy that there might be some one else wandering around there and they had not arranged any signals for recognition.

They were all moving again now and he felt certain that they must have passed the place where he had left Murphy. He stopped and listened in silence till long after all sound of the rest of them had died away in the distance. He waited a moment longer and then hissed cautiously. The response was so immediate and so close that he almost jumped out of his skin.

“Begorra,” Murphy exclaimed in a relieved tone as he stepped out from behind a tree close beside Scott, “that’s the first time I ever pointed a loaded gun at a friend, but you been looking down the barrel of my old Luger for the last five minutes and didn’t know it. If you had not made some signal or something pretty quick I’d have blown up.”

“Gee!” Scott exclaimed, grasping Murphy’s hand and sitting suddenly on the ground, “I think I would have felt better if you had shot me. I have been so afraid you would hail those other fellows when they came along that it has just about made me sick. I feel as limp as a dishrag.”

“I came mighty near doing just that thing, too,” Murphy replied cheerfully. “I had my mouth all puckered up to ask you what had kept you so long when one of them spoke. I was already sitting down or I would have dropped same as you did.”

“I was wishing mighty hard that I had taken your pistol as you wanted me to. I saw my mistake when I discovered that those fellows might run on to you here in the dark, shoot you and have it all over before I could ever get near enough to them to do anything.”

“Pretty handy thing to have when you are dealing with a bunch like that,” Murphy said. “But tell me all about it. Where have you been all this time and what happened? Where are those guys going?”

Scott thought a second. “It’s a pretty long story but I guess this is as good a place to tell it as any unless we want to hurry on after those fellows and get ourselves shot.” He went on to tell Murphy all that he had overheard at the camp fire, how their retreat was already cut off from the canal, and how those men who had just passed were on their way to head them off and shoot them if they attempted to make their way around the head of the swamp. When he mentioned Qualley’s name Murphy almost cried aloud.

“To think of the hours that old scoundrel has sat down there in the brush with me and watched to see if he could catch himself stealing logs out of that pond!” Murphy exclaimed angrily. “If I ever catch up with him I’ll punch his head for that if it is my last act.”

“Now the question for us to decide,” Scott said thoughtfully, “is what we are going to do? How are we going to get out of this place? We have been two years getting in here and it looks as though we might be a long time getting out.”

Murphy thought about it for a moment. “We might go west from here instead of east as they expect us to and then go north cross-country till we strike the main line railroad. It would be a long way around and I do not know anything about that country. No telling how many swamps we would get tangled up in or whom we might meet on the way, but it ought to be fairly safe.”

“I thought of the possibility of that,” Scott replied. “Of course, they do not know that we know anything about their plan to head us off. They know that we do not know much about this country here and will not know that we are going across a narrow little neck of land where they cannot miss us. They did not seem to think of the possibility of our going around the other way; maybe it was because you cannot get around that way. At any rate it would take us a long time and the plan does not appeal to me much. I am in favor of having a look at the swamp and seeing if we cannot figure out some way of getting across it.”

“Let’s try it,” Murphy exclaimed enthusiastically, “even if we can’t make it, it will be shorter to wait till they go home than to make a trip around the world as we would have to do if we went west. They only planned to wait for us till to-morrow night.”

So they decided to follow the beach down to the edge of the swamp and try it. They started down the beach, moving rather cautiously and stopping to listen every few minutes, for they did not know that the other men had not stopped along there somewhere and they did not care to run on to them unexpectedly. Scott glanced at his wrist watch. The little luminous hands pointed to half-past eleven. The fog was beginning to fade away. Before they had gone very far the night was clear once more and it seemed almost as light as day.

“That fog must have come on for our special benefit,” Scott whispered. They had become so accustomed to whispering that they did not seem to be able to stop it.

They thought they were a little too conspicuous on the open beach and turned back into the edge of the woods where they could see everything on the beach without being seen. The soil was so sandy and the ground so free from underbrush that they made very little noise. What little breeze there was was blowing in their faces.

Suddenly they caught sight of a moving object in the woods ahead of them. They stopped instantly and watched it with bated breath. They could not quite make it out, but it was moving towards the beach and they knew they would soon have a look at it in the moonlight of the open. Whatever it was it did not seem to be in any hurry. It moved jerkily and stopped so long sometimes that they almost lost track of it. It looked like a man crouching and sneaking along as though stalking something. If it had been coming in their direction they would have been badly worried, and even as it was Murphy had examined his rifl............