could hold he
filled his two cocoanuts for Dick. On his way to camp he hunted up a
young palmetto for the bud or cabbage which grew in the top of the
tree. The sharp edges of the great, tough leaves tore his flesh as
he climbed through them, and it was only after more than an hour of
hard work with his knife that he secured the cabbage he was working
for. By this time the water he had drunk had oozed out through his
pores. He was so parched with thirst that he took a long walk back
to the pond and filled up again.

That night Dick and Ned had broiled alligator steak and palmetto
cabbage for supper. Both suffered so much for want of water that Ned
started out at daylight to find the old abandoned plantation. Dick
was pale and his smile so wan that Ned's heart was sore at leaving
him. He was too earnest to think of trivial things, and he sloshed
through the swamp without thought of the swaying heads of little
speckle-bellies in his path, or the great, ugly cotton-mouth
moccasins that moved slowly aside as he wallowed through their
lairs. He stopped long enough on the border of the prairie to find a
club, with which he fiercely pounded to death a rattlesnake, upon
whose coils he had nearly stepped when the locust-like warning found
its way to his consciousness.

After about three miles of tramping, during which he waded
waist-deep across two sloughs, the prairie opened upon familiar
ground, and Ned knew that he was opposite the plantation he sought.
In the decaying building he found an old bucket that would hold
three or four gallons, and a couple of quart cans in which water
could be boiled. From a tamarind tree he gathered the half-dried
fruit with its sweet acidity, and in the old garden he discovered a
few stalks of sugar-cane. He picked up a rusty fish-hook and from an
old net got a quantity of string. Then filling his bucket with rain
water, he started back to Dick and the camp. The journey was a hard
one, and though he refused to drink a drop of the water, half of it
was lost on the way. The weight of it pressed him down in the mire
of the sloughs until he sank to the armpits as he held the heavy
bucket on his head. Dick laughed aloud with joy, even if it was a
bit hysterical, when Ned got home to camp.

"Been lonesome?" asked Ned after Dick had drank a quart of water
and looked as if he wanted a gallon more.

"Not very. Tom has amused me," replied Dick, as he pointed to a
branch over his head. Ned looked up,