pecks continued to add their mite to the countless
number which had preceded them.

"Egrets!" he cried aloud. "Millions of them. What a sight!"

He was looking at one of the rarest sights beheld by men, a great egret
rookery with its countless beautiful birds settling upon their nests
for the night. He was about to turn his glasses elsewhere when an
interruption seemed to take place in the snow-white patch. A cloud of
gray smoke belched explosively up through its center. Another and
another followed swiftly until six of the blasts had occurred. The
dense mass of birds rose in fluttering flight and flew wildly up into
the sky where the setting sun turned their spotless white to pink and
gold. Only there remained upon the dark tops of the mangroves six
small, ragged patches of white, the limp bodies of scores of the
beautiful birds in each, where the strange smoke blasts had wrought
their deadly work.

"What's the good word; found a way out?" called Higgins from below.

"Not yet." Payne dismissed the tragedy he had witnessed and moved his
glasses in a slow arc to the north and east.

"Look for running water," shouted Higgins. "That's our bet."

"I know." Roger was scanning the mud field to the northward.

"There must be high ground some place beyond," continued the engineer.
"And if there is, there'll be a creek running into that mud. That
would mean fresh water."

"I see something that looks like high ground, all right," said Payne,
studying a smudge of blue against the northern horizon. "But I don't
see anything like running water."

"It's got to be there," maintained Higgins. "In this soft mud it may
be underground and you'd never see it."

Payne held his precarious perch, scrutinizing the treacherous ground
which they must cross if they were to continue their journey, until the
sun, like a blazing red wafer, had slipped down behind the mangrove
swamp in the west and darkness had come to the earth below. The
darkness spread and crept upward to where he sat, and as he prepared to
descend Payne glanced up toward the last rosy gleams on the topmost
branches of the tall, dead tree. The buzzards, which had flown away at
his appearance, had returned and the sun was gilding their black bodies
and their foul red heads, as patiently, confidently, they sat waiting.

"Higgins," said Payne, when he reached the ground, "there seems to be a
chain of islands running across that mud. I picked out a string o