to
submit."

So the trio pushed on still farther into the great Dismal Swamp, a weird
section of strange vegetable and animal life, where great black trees
stood silent and grim, with Spanish moss dangling from their branches,
bright-plumaged birds flashed across the opens, ugly snakes glided
sinuously over the boggy land, and sleepy alligators slid from muddy
banks and disappeared beneath the surface of the dead water.

The professor continued to grumble.

"If we should come upon one of these wonderful golden herons, Frank
could not come within a hundred yards of it with that old bow and
arrow," he said.

"Couldn't I?" retorted Frank. "Perhaps not, but I could make a bluff at
it."

"I don't see why you won't use a gun."

"Well, there are two reasons. In the first place, in order to be sure of
killing a heron with a shotgun I'd have to use fairly large shot, and
that might injure the bird badly; in the second place, there might be
two, and I'd not be able to bag more than one of them with a gun, as the
report would scare the other. Then there is the possibility that I would
miss with the first shot, and the heron would escape entirely. If I miss
with an arrow, it is not likely the bird will be alarmed and take to
flight, so I'll have another chance at it. Oh, there are some advantages
in using the primitive bow and arrow."

"Bosh!" exploded Scotch. "You have a way of always making out a good
case for yourself. You won't be beaten."

"Begobs! he is a hard b'y to bate, profissor," grinned Barney. "Av he
wurn't, it's dead he'd been long ago."

"That's right, that's right," agreed Scotch, who admired Frank more than
he wished to acknowledge. "He's lucky."

"It's not all luck, profissor," assured the Irish boy. "In minny cases
it's pure nerve thot pulls him through."

"Well, there's a great deal of luck in it--of course there is."

"Oh, humor the professor, Barney," laughed Frank. "Perhaps he'll become
better natured if you do."

They now came to a region of wild cypress woods, where the treetops were
literally packed with old nests, made in the peculiar heron style. They
were constructed of huge bristling piles of cross-laid sticks, not
unlike brush heaps of a Western clearing.

Here for years, almost ages, different species of herons had built their
nests in perfect safety.

As the canoe slowly and silently glided toward the "rookeries," white
and blue herons were seen to rise from the reed-grass and f