Of what happened immediately afterward¹ Lockwood had no knowledge.  
It seemed that almost whole days had passed before he half started up in semilucidity. He could move neither his hands nor his feet. It was still dark. He could hear the thud and wash of engines and waters, and he imagined himself still on the river steamer. He smelled the heavy, decaying odor of the swamps. His head ached terribly, and seemed swollen³ to enormous dimensions. He could not think nor collect himself, and he relapsed into dizzy unconsciousness.
 
But when he recovered intelligence there was light in his eyes. He lay on his back; there was a ceiling of pine boards above him. Still dreaming of the river boat, he tried to move himself, and found that his arms were tied fast at the wrists, and his legs at the ankles.
 
He turned his head sideways, growing dizzy with the slight movement. He was in a long room, perhaps ten feet by twenty. Opposite him a couple of bunks⁴ were built into the wall, empty except for frightfully tattered⁶ rags that might once have been called blankets. At each end of the room was an open door, where the sunlight shone in, and he had a glimpse of green thickets⁷, and he smelled swamp water. Outside the door human figures moved indistinctly.
 
Now he knew where he was. He was in a house boat, probably the boat he had grown familiar with on the bayou; though how he had got there he could not at the moment imagine. His head was too painful for thought; he lay back, crushed down with unspeakable defeat and weakness and despair.
 
The door darkened. A big figure came in, and Lockwood saw a face brought close to his own—a bearded, brutal⁸ face, with a great bluish stain or scar on the forehead.
 
“Done woke up, air ye?” said Blue Bob.
 
Lockwood stared back, incapable⁹ of speaking. The riverman laughed a little and went out, returning with a lump of corn pone¹¹ and a tin cup of coffee.
 
“Here, swaller this,” he said, “an’ you’ll feel better.”
 
Three more men came in, and stood staring at the prisoner with the stolid¹² curiosity of animals. Lockwood’s wrists were loosened; the food put into his hands. He could not eat the corn bread, but he drank the bitter, black coffee, and it did stimulate¹³ him. His head cleared. He looked round at the ring of hard faces.
 
“What’s this for? What are you going to do with me?” he demanded weakly.
 
“Dunno,” said Bob. “We’re goin’ to take right good keer of you, so you won’t git away.”
 
Lockwood shut his eyes again, beginning to remember, to understand—slowly, painfully piecing out the situation. Hanna was in alliance with the river gang, just as he had half suspected. It was a winning alliance, too. Lockwood could not but feel that he had lost his game—for the present. He was not much afraid for his life. The pirates might have murdered him very easily, but they had spared him; they said they were going to “take good keer” of him. Hanna wanted him out of the way until the oil deal could be put through.
 
His coat was gone, his boots, his cambric shirt. There was not much left but his trousers and underwear. His pistol was gone, of course, and his pocketbook and his watch, even his handkerchief. But the money belt was there. They had not thought to search him to the skin. He felt the familiar rasp of the leather and the hardness of the ten-dollar gold coins inside, and it gave him hope; so much does money seem to be power.
 
He asked to be let up, but they refused; and really he was better where he was. He spent the rest of the day in the bunk⁵, dozing¹⁴ fitfully into nightmares, sometimes feverishly¹⁵ awake, too sick to know how the hours passed.
 
Twice more they brought him food, fried catfish¹⁶ and corn pone and the same black coffee, strong as oak-ash lye. He drank, but he could not eat; and after a time he found the cabin in darkness again. Some one tied his hands up without any regard for his comfort.
 
A loud chorus of snoring went on from the pirates in their bunks. Thus unguarded, he might have tried to escape, but he was far too ill to think of any such thing. He slept himself instead, and was the better for it. He awoke next morning with the swimming sensation almost gone from his head, and even a slight appetite.
 
That day they let him out of the bunk, greatly to his relief, for the place swarmed¹⁷ with fleas¹⁸, and probably with worse vermin. His ankles were still loosely hobbled, but he was allowed to sit on the open stern deck.
 
His first glance was for familiar landmarks¹⁹. He found none. The boat was lying in a little bay or bayou, perhaps a creek²⁰ mouth, surrounded by dense²¹ thickets of titi and rattan²². Through a tangle²³ of overhanging willow²⁴ he thought he saw the Alabama River outside, but anybody might have passed down the stream within fifty yards without suspecting the presence of the house boat, or even of the harbor where it lay.
 
He did not know the place. He was sure it was no part of the bayou near Craig’s camp. He recollected²⁵ the thudding of engines he had heard or felt soon after being kidnapped. The house boat was moving then. They must have taken her out of the bayou, down the river for some miles, and laid her in this hiding place, which they had probably used before.
 
The boat was moored²⁶ against a huge log that made a natural wharf²⁷. On an open sandy space ashore²⁸ a cooking fire was burning. Not far from it two of the gang lay flat on their backs in the shade. Blue Bob stayed aboard, with the fourth of the party, a young man, little more than a boy, with a vacuous²⁹, animal face, and long, youthful down sprouting³⁰ from his chin.
 
“Well—going to let me go ashore?” Lockwood remarked, by way of being conversational³¹.
 
“Naw!” Bob growled³², staring stupidly.
 
Lockwood tried again, getting no answer. Studying his captors, he decided³³ that it was not so much animosity as sheer lack of words. They spoke³⁴ little more to one another than to him. He observed them all that day with growing amazement³⁵; he thought he had never seen men so devoid³⁶ of all the attributes of humanity. His amazement grew to a sort of horror. He felt as if he had fallen into the hands of some half-human animals, some soulless race without either understanding or mercy.
 
They spoke mainly in drawled monosyllables; they played cards and shot craps endlessly, but without excitement—perhaps having no money to stake. No doubt they were all devoured³⁷ with malaria³⁸ and hookworms; but all the same they could handle an ax with masterly dexterity³⁹, and on occasion they could be as quick as cats.
 
Half asleep as they generally seemed, Lockwood felt their eyes perpetually upon him. At every movement, some one turned his head like a flash, and every one of these men carried a gun, the handle protruding⁴⁰ shamelessly from the hip⁴¹ pocket. Bob had two—one of them being Lockwood’s own automatic.
 
After several futile⁴² attempts, Lockwood gave up trying to get on any sort of relations with them. He watched them with dread⁴³ and repulsion as they rolled dice⁴⁴ on the dirty deck. One of the “bones” fell through a crack in the planking, and, trying to loosen a board to reach it, the youngest of the men broke the blade of his sheath knife. He tossed away the shortened blade with a curse, but the broken tip remained on the deck and Lockwood fixed⁴⁵ his eyes on it.
 
It was scarcely two inches long, but was the nearest approach to a cutting tool that had come anywhere near his reach. He managed to shuffle⁴⁶ near it; he put his foot on it. Eventually he sat down on his heels, got the triangular⁴⁷ bit of steel into his hands, and transferred it to his trousers pocket. It was not much, but it might be something.
 
The day dragged on. That afternoon something went by on the river outside, invisible through the trees—probably a raft of timber. Toward evening they fed him and put him back in his bunk, tying his hands once more at the wrists.
 
A clammy white fog from the swamps drifted smokily through the doorways⁴⁹. The whole cabin was hazy⁵¹ and damp. The pirates had a big fire burning on the shore; he could see the red reflection of it; and then, faint and rapidly increasing, he heard the distant drumming of the engine of a motor boat coming down the river.
 
Every nerve thrilled in him. It was destiny that was coming, he knew. He heard the boat slacken, then scrape through the willow boughs⁵² that masked the bayou, and then a bump upon the house boat, and a voice.
 
His heart sank. It was worse than destiny; it was disaster.
 
“Got him safe?” said Hanna.
 
“Got him alive,” returned Bob. “Ruther hev him dead?”
 
“I sure would,” said the other earnestly.
 
Then there was a long, hoarse⁵³ mutter of talk which Lockwood could not make out. Hanna was arguing something. Then silence fell. Feet trampled⁵⁴ the deck outside, and Blue Bob came into the cabin, carrying a flaring⁵⁵ torch of fat pine, which filled the foggy room with resinous⁵⁶ smoke and a lurid⁵⁷ light. Ha............