're hungry, and don't see a spoon lying around, just dip your
hand in the family pot, if you can eat that way. If you want to
sleep lie down on the nearest unoccupied bunk. If you make a mistake
they won't tell you of it.

"Now, remember above all things, that you mustn't get rattled.
That's the biggest risk you'll run in this country. If you get
separated from Johnny and think about being lost and get excited and
begin to walk fast, or run, stop right there and sit down and don't
go on till you're perfectly cool, not if you have to camp right
where you are for a night, or a day, or both. Just as soon as you
have taught yourself that when you get excited you have got to sit
still for an hour or two, you'll stop getting excited. There is
mighty little real danger where you are going. There are bear and
panther, but the only thing on earth that's a bigger coward than a
bear is a panther. People from your country think the alligator is a
dangerous brute. I have lived among them, killed them, dealt in
their hides, of which I have shipped north the biggest consignments
sent from this coast, since before you were born, and I never knew
of a human being having been harmed by one. This deep river running
in front of my door used to be full of them, and there are some
there now, but my whole family of children swim in it almost every
day without thought of danger. Only two weeks ago Johnny killed a
ten-foot 'gator right in front of my house and within a hundred
feet of it. Any of our hunters will wade into a pond where there are
fifty alligators, to drag out one they have shot; many of them will
tackle, with nothing but a stick, any 'gator under six feet that
they can catch on a prairie or asleep on a bank, and a few of the
boys will wade bare-footed and bare-handed into a pond on the
prairie and bring out little alligators. Johnny is a dabster at
that. Likely you'll see him do it before many days.

"Of course rattlesnakes are bad, but they always give warning,
usually a good long one. I've killed hundreds, perhaps thousands of
them and never been bitten. Cotton-mouth moccasins are poisonous,
but they are sluggish and not so very plenty. You'll have to get
used to the smaller moccasins. You will find lots of them. I've
kicked them out of my path on the prairies and in the marshes for a
good many years without having been bitten by one.

"Sharks have a bad name, and Florida waters are full of them, but
there is no authentic i