"Now get him, Mr. Bunn!" cried the manager, and there was another splash, while aboard the boats the proper bits of acting were gone through with, that the camera might catch them.

Once they were in the water Mr. Bunn and Mr. Sneed acted their parts well, and the result was a good film. Then, once more aboard the boats, a start was made for the fort, where the final act was to take place.

"I say, me deah fellah!" complained Mr. Towne, as he moved away from Mr.

Bunn, who sat near him; "keep a bit off, that's a good chap! I don't want to wet this suit, you know."

"Oh, all right, I beg your pardon," spoke the other.

But Mr. Towne's anxiety for his garments was wasted, for at that moment Mr. Sneed, taking off his coat, wrung some water from it, and of this a considerable quant.i.ty splashed on the light suit of Mr. Towne.

"Oh, I say!" the latter cried in dismay. "This won't do, you know!"

"Humph! It seems to me it's already done," observed Paul, with a chuckle.

During the rest of the trip Mr. Towne was kept busy trying to dry up the wet spots with his perfumed handkerchief.

Pop Snooks, the property man, who had little to do when outdoor scenes were being made, was busy with the other moving picture camera on the fort wall, and presently, on the arrival of the company at that place, the final scenes were filmed.

"Wasn't it a dandy race?" cried Alice, as she and her sister, with Russ and Paul, started back to the hotel.

"It was for you because you won, I suppose," remarked Miss Pennington, in a disagreeable tone.

"Not at all," returned Alice, promptly. "It was a glorious race anyhow.

Winning didn't count; it was all for the picture."

"That's the way to look at it," said Paul, in her ear. "But, all the same, I'm glad your boat won."

"Thanks," she replied, as she tripped along beside him.

Miss Pennington and Miss Dixon, pausing a moment to "readjust their complexions," as Alice said (for which she was reproved by Ruth), went on by themselves.

The company of players remained in St. Augustine several days, and many fine films resulted, the scenery lending itself particularly well to the camera.

One act in a play took place at the alligator "farm," on Anastasia Island. There Ruth and Alice saw 'gators in all stages, from tiny ones just emerging from the sh.e.l.l, to big fourteen-foot ones--regular "man-eaters" they were told.

"Ugh! the horrid creatures!" exclaimed Ruth, who could not repress a shudder.

"They aren't very pleasant," agreed Alice. "And to think that perhaps those two girls may be--"

"Oh, my dear! Don't mention it! I can't bear to think of such a thing.

It's too horrible!"

"But I suppose there must be many such as that one, in the wilds of the swamps and bayous," said Alice in a low voice, as she pointed her parasol at a huge saurian.

"If there are any such, I don't want to know it--or see them," murmured Ruth, again shuddering. "Oh, I hope we don't go too far into the wilds."

"So do I," agreed her sister.

That afternoon, calling his company of players together, Mr. Pertell said:

"Friends, we will leave in two days for the interior. I want to get some views along the rivers and bayous, where the scenery is wilder than it is here."

"And where are we going, may I ask?" inquired Mr. DeVere.

"To a place called Sycamore, near Lake Kissimmee," was the answer.

"Oh, Ruth!" exclaimed Alice, impulsively, when she heard this.

"Yes, dear, what is it?"

"Why, that's where those two girls were from--the ones who were lost, you know!"

"Hush! Yes. You know we agreed to say nothing about it, for fear of causing undue alarm. Miss Pennington and Miss Dixon might refuse to go, you know," she went on in a low voice, "and that would make trouble for Mr. Pertell."

"Oh, but isn't it a strange coincidence?" remarked Alice.

"It certainly is. But perhaps the girls have been found by this time."

"Our destination will be Lake Kissimmee," proceeded Mr. Pertell. "We will take some pictures on the lake, some on the Kissimmee River, that connects the lake of that name with Lake Okeechobee, and then we'll go a little way into the wilds, on various streams."

Ruth and Alice looked at each other apprehensively.

CHAPTER XII

A WARNING

"Beg pardon," said Claude Towne, during a pause in which Mr. Pertell was consulting some notes he had jotted down, in order to make matters more clear to his players. "Beg pardon, my dear sir, but are we going to a _very_ wild part of this country?"

"Why, yes--rather so," was the not very rea.s.suring answer. "You probably won't be able to get a room and bath at the hotel where we stop."

"Oh, another one of those backwoods places," murmured Miss Pennington.

"How horrid!"

"Is there any--er--any society there?" asked Mr. Towne.

"Hardly," answered the manager, "unless you call the natives society."

"Wretched!" exclaimed the dude, with a wry face.

"Hold on, though!" cried Mr. Pertell, "I believe that there are some of our first families there."

"Ah, that is better," replied Mr. Towne, adjusting his lavender tie. "I shall include my evening clothes in my wardrobe, then."

"I'd advise you to," remarked Mr. Pertell, with an a.s.sumption of gravity.