"But we can't camp here. I'm not a merman, to sleep in the water,"
said Dick.

"You can stretch out in the canoe, if we tie it so it won't tip
over, and I'll build a brush bed good enough for me in ten minutes,"
said Johnny, who took the axe, and cut a short pole, which he rested
on the branches of two trees which grew side by side, so that the
stick lay parallel to a fallen tree trunk which lay about five feet
distant. Then he cut a number of inch saplings into six-foot
lengths, with which he made a platform from the pole to the tree,
and spreading his blanket on this elastic couch announced that his
bed was ready. The boys made a hearty supper from the fragments
that were left from the bountiful provision that Mrs. Streeter had
made for their dinner. Dick's bed in the canoe was probably softer
than Johnny's bed, but he didn't sleep as well. The sides of his
canoe were only five inches above the water which contained the
moccasins, and Dick was sure he could feel their tongues touch his
face as the reptiles searched for a soft place to strike. Then the
snarling from a tree beside him would have been less terrifying if
he had known that instead of being, as he supposed, two wildcats
quarreling for the first bite at him, it was merely a friendly
family discussion between two 'coons.

Things looked more cheerful by daylight, and when Johnny asked
whether they should go on or turn back, Dick replied:

"Go on just as long as the creek runs." But the creek became choked
with brush and turned back on its course, until Johnny said:

"If this crik gits any crookeder it'll fetch us back home."

The boys had to cut away two trees which had fallen across the creek
where the growth was so thick that to cut a path around would have
been more work than to clear away the logs. The trees were large,
their axe a little one, and when the boys came to three trees lying
near together across the stream Dick was so dismayed that he said to
Johnny:

"Let's get back out of this creek. We must be on the wrong track,
Mr. Streeter said Indians and hunters got through this country, but
they never got through this way. What do you think?"

"Hate to go back, but s'pose we've got ter."

Dick's spirits ran low during the return trip through the creek.
They were going in the wrong direction, and each hour was taking him
farther away from where he supposed Ned was. Many times he wished
they had kept on and fought their way through the creek.