But Ted smiled hopefully, for again Buck Hardy kept his seat. Once more the big slacker kept the boy by the fire an hour longer, asking many questions and listening soberly while he answered as best he could.

XII

Ted's greatest wild-animal adventure was so unexpected and astonishing that it became the subject of wondering comment in the camp for days.

Strange to say, it came within less than twenty-four hours of the bagging of the bear, after which achievement Buck Hardy, with but little opposition, gave the boys the freedom of Deserters' Island.

"From now on," he said at supper, "I want the boys to be free to go where they please on this island. I won't have a boy as smart and lucky with a gun as Ted cooped up in this camp. Let the boys hunt this island.

No use hemmin' 'em in too close anyhow. They can't get away, with some of us takin' the boats every day. They'll think twice before they wade off in the swamp, not knowin' which way to go."

So after breakfast next morning Ted and Hubert started off openly, their little guns over their shoulders and a camp dog, which they had petted and become fond of, following gladly at their heels. They first walked down to the lower end of the island and located the jungle trail a second time. Then they slowly hunted up the left hand side to a point nearly opposite and less than a mile and a half from the camp. During all this time they saw practically nothing to shoot, and at last Ted complained that luck had deserted him. Hubert, always the first to be discouraged, proposed that they give up the hunt and "cut across" the island toward camp.

Still tramping on, loath to surrender, Ted suddenly tripped and fell over a log, striking the side of his head against a sharp snag. He was at first slightly stunned and his wound, though but little more than a scratch, bled freely. What was more serious, he sprained his ankle as he fell and found it impossible to walk without unbearable pain. After trying repeatedly, he became quite faint and was forced to lie down.

"Hubert, you'd better go on to camp," he said breathlessly, "and, if I don't turn up by dinner time, tell 'em what's the matter. Mr. Hardy will know what to do--if this pain keeps me from walking all day."

Ted raised himself on his arm, pointing, anxious to make sure that Hubert took the right course, and then, as his alarmed cousin started off at a trot, he fell back exhausted, closing his eyes. All was now quiet except for the sighing of the breeze in the high pine tops and the panting of the dog squatting near him. As long as he did not move the pain in his ankle was eased, and, as the bleeding scratch on the side of his head troubled him but little, he grew drowsy and in no great while fell asleep.

Ted was awakened some time later more by a warning sense of danger than by certain slightly disturbing sounds. On opening his eyes, he found the dog standing close to him, the hair on its back erect and its tail between its legs--both signs of fear. The boy's faithful guardian, with low growling that was almost a whine, gazed steadily into the faintly rustling foliage of a water-oak some thirty feet away. The tree stood on the edge of the low, wet area, its boughs interlacing with the branches of other trees behind it, these connecting in turn with myriads of others and thus forming a leafy bridge for miles through the dense, mysterious, softly whispering swamp.

While he slept something had come stealthily over this bridge--something keen of scent, with eyes of hate and knife-edged claws, hungry for blood--and now a long lank animal of a tawny hue, its twitching tail uplifted and its small flat head lowered, lay along a limb of the water-oak watching with green, glaring, cruel eyes as he stirred.

At first Ted saw nothing to alarm him, but soon he caught sight of a tail like that of an enormous cat beating back and forth among the leaves in a manner startlingly suggestive of both restlessness and rage.

He remembered to have heard one of the slackers say that the tail of a panther twitched in that nervous way when the beast was crouching for a spring. He remembered also the agreement of all the slackers engaged in the conversation that no killing of a panther in the Okefinokee had been reported for years.

"But that must be one," thought Ted, "and it smelt my blood and is after me."

Forgetting his sprained ankle, the boy clutched his gun and started up, but staggered and dropped to his knees in an agony of pain. On seeing his master stir, the dog showed more spirit, putting on a bolder front and barking wildly.

This seemed to put an end to the suspense. Almost at once the great cat, snarling fiercely, tore through the leaf.a.ge surrounding her and descended toward her intended prey, striking the earth within a few feet of the dog.

Ted managed to raise his gun and take aim, but before he pulled the trigger the panther had leaped again and engaged the dog at close quarters. To shoot then was to endanger friend as well as foe, and the boy hesitated. Fearing that mere buck-shot would not serve anyhow and that the faithful dog was his only protection, Ted painfully crawled further away, looking back over his shoulder to watch the fierce struggle between the two beasts, with never a moment's let-up in such harsh growling and snarling as he had never heard in all his life.

The contending creatures, fast in each other's grip, rapidly drew nearer, tearing up gra.s.s and brush as they came. Apparently the panther's object was to shake off the dog and reach the boy, her real intended prey, and it looked as if she would succeed, for she was larger as well as much stronger than the battling friend of Ted who braved her cruel claws in his defense.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The contending creatures, fast in each other's grip, rapidly drew nearer]

In great concern for the dog as well as for himself, the boy again started to his feet, but again the pain was more than he could bear. He tottered, fell, and this time a black, quivering sea seemed to engulf all his senses. When consciousness returned, which was almost at once, the horrid din bombarded his ears as before, and, as he opened his eyes, the panther accomplished a resistless rush in his direction, arriving within perhaps five feet of him together with the heroic dog, which still refused to be shaken off.

Ted thought his days were numbered, yet the very thought seemed to steady his nerves and clear his head. Rising to his knees, he lifted his gun and watched his chance. The fiercely struggling and snarling beasts came nearer still, now the panther and now the dog turning a back to the boy.

Suddenly, with a coolness that he afterward wondered at, Ted leaned forward and, seizing the opportunity as it came, put the very muzzle of his gun against the neck of his enemy and pulled the trigger.

As the report reverberated through the woods, the panther leaped high in the air, wresting herself away at last from the grip of the dog's strong teeth. It looked to Ted as if she would descend directly upon him, and, as he shrank away, giving himself up for lost, his senses failed him once more and oblivion followed.

When he revived and looked around the panther lay still on one side of him and the dog, cruelly wounded, struggled feebly with a low whining on the other. A large section of the mighty cat's neck had been literally torn out by the discharge of the gun at close quarters and there could be no question that life was extinct. a.s.sured of this, and fearing that the dog could not survive, Ted put an arm around his faithful savior's neck and wept.

It was thus that the boy and the dog were found when, after the welcome sounds of the rescuing party's nearing halloo, Buck Hardy rushed upon the scene, followed by Al Peters, Bud Jones, Hubert and July.

"Are you all right, kid?" asked Buck, gathering Ted up tenderly.

"_I'm_ all right, but the dog--poor, faithful Spot! Can't you do something for him, Mr. Hardy?"

A brush stretcher was hastily constructed and Ted was placed upon it, but he refused to be borne to the camp by the four men until the wounded dog had been laid at his side.

"We'd better hunt around this island tomorrow," remarked Al Peters, as the four men labored across the island with their burden. "That boy bags more game right here than we do on our long trips."

It pleased Ted greatly to overhear this, but his satisfaction was not complete until, after a careful examination of the cruelly clawed dog at camp, he was a.s.sured that his devoted friend would recover. His own slight head wound and sprained ankle did not trouble him. After each had received the most expert attention the sympathetic and admiring camp of slackers was capable of, it was merely a matter of keeping still temporarily in order to save himself from pain.

"What's a little scratch on the head and a sprained ankle," he asked of the solicitous men about the camp fire that night, "compared with what our soldiers have to stand--liquid fire and poison gas bombs in the trenches and submarine torpedoes at sea?"

"I don't reckon anybody in this war has been up against anything worse than you was to-day," remarked Buck Hardy, glancing at the panther skin which had been brought in and hung up in the camp where the lame boy could see it.

"Oh, yes, they have," insisted Ted; "but they were not scared the way I was. Why, our soldiers on the _Tuscania_ stood and sang 'The Star-Spangled Banner' while the ship was sinking and they were waiting their turn to get off in the boats. Many of them went to their death like the greatest heroes."

Ted then told what he had read about the sinking of this transport some two weeks before he left his uncle's home in North Carolina to come down to the neighborhood of the Okefinokee. The slackers had not heard of it and all listened with great interest.

"Even women--lots of them--have been up against much worse in this war than I was to-day," the boy continued. "Think of Miss Edith Cavell, that lovely English nurse the Germans shot in Belgium."

As Ted eloquently told the story of the execution of this innocent and devoted woman, practically all the slackers gave expression to lively indignation.

"I wouldn't 'a believed a bunch o' devils would 'a done such a thing, and _to a lady_ at that!" one voice called out.

"What do the Huns care about a lady or anything in the world?" cried Ted. "They treat women as roughly as they treat men. They've carried off thousands of Belgian and French women and made them slaves. They've actually made women work in front of their lines under the fire of French guns. They've herded up women and children in Belgian and French towns and shot them down. They've carried off hundreds of thousands of men and women from conquered countries and made them slave night and day in Germany. The very songs they sing--I've seen translations of some of them--tell proudly of cruel, barbarous outrages and boast that neither women nor children are spared.

"Why, I've seen a list of the atrocities committed by the Germans in this war that would make your blood boil, that would make you sick,"

the boy continued. "And it's the truth--all taken from what they call 'verified official reports,' with as many as ten witnesses for everything. You see, the Germans believed they were going to conquer the world, and so many of them didn't care _what_ they did. They ma.s.sacred prisoners in cold blood at Ypres and other places. They loot, burn and often kill as they go. They've nailed people up alive against doors.

They've cut off hands and feet and left the poor creatures alive.

They've filled the streets with dead--not only fighting soldiers but old men, women and children. They've burned people up in their houses.

They've cut even women to pieces. The way they get all the money in a captured town is to threaten to kill everybody, and to prove that they are going to do it they kill a few hundred to begin with. They drive the helpless people like cattle--drive them out and leave them to starve.

They seem to delight in burning or knocking down churches with their cannon. They've stuck bayonets in women and boys and girls and pitched them into the fire of burning houses. The cavalry has tied men and women to their stirrups and galloped around with them dragging. They throw the dead into springs and wells. I can't begin to tell you of their awful doings. They have even stuck their bayonets through little children and held them up as they walked through the streets."

After twisting nervously in his seat and breathing hard as he listened, Buck Hardy now started to his feet with a cry of rage. And then--- as July described the exhibition later--he "gritted his teeth and shook his fist and cussed awful." The negro did not exaggerate. Buck Hardy's rage was as vocal as it was intense. He exhausted all the most picturesque and crushing profanity he could think of, concluding: "I wish to G.o.d I could get my hands on one o' them devils!"

It was on the tip of Ted's tongue to say: "Well, then, why don't you go where you can get a chance to do it?" But a warning nudge from Hubert reminded him to be discreet in the case of their best friend in the camp. He also remembered July's advice not to push the big slacker too hard. And perhaps he didn't need any pushing now; for clearly he was awakened. So Ted merely watched Buck's signs of incandescent anger with great joy and said nothing.

But Buck himself must have seen the thought in the boy's glowing eyes.

He must have sensed something in the general atmosphere of the fire-lit circle tending to convey to him the startling warning that he had put himself to the test by his own outburst. At all events he suddenly shut his lips, turned on his heel, and strode off into the dark woods.

"The Huns are beastly," Ted then remarked to n.o.body in particular, "but after fifty years of training they are fine soldiers and it's no picnic to down them. That's why our country needs every able-bodied young man to go on the job."

An embarra.s.sing moment followed. Ted looked around at the sober-faced slackers and their eyes fell before him. They had been thrilled, horrified, stirred with anger and feelings of outrage; but they were not ready to face the question they feared the persistent and plucky boy would put to them. They shifted their positions uneasily, began to get on their feet, and then in twos and threes went hurriedly off to bed, anxious to escape another direct appeal.

"You put up a great talk and you sort of got hold of some of them this time," whispered Hubert; "but you see--as I've told you before--that it won't do any good."

"Maybe it will--after a while," said Ted, his eyes still glowing.