aw-palmetto stretched away before us to the base of the
hills; game trails ran through it in every direction like sheep paths;
a few moth-eaten Florida deer trotted away as we appeared.

Into one of these trails stepped Samuel Mink, burdened only with his
concertina and a box of cigars. I, loaded with seventy pounds of
impedimenta including a moving-picture apparatus, reeled after him.

He walked on jauntily toward the hills, his pearl-coloured bowler hat at
an angle. Occasionally he played upon his concertina as he advanced; now
and then he cut a pigeon wing. I hated him. At every toilsome step I
hated him more deeply. He played "Tipperary" on his concertina.

"See 'em, old top?" he inquired, nodding toward the hills. "I'm a man of
my word, I am. Look at 'em! Take 'em in, old sport! An' reemember, each
an' every hill is guaranteed to contain one bony fidy cave-lady what is
the last vanishin' traces of a extinc' an' dissappeerin' race!"

We toiled on--that is, I did, bowed under my sweating load of
paraphernalia. He skipped in advance like some degenerate twentieth
century faun, playing on his pipes the unmitigated melodies of George
Cohan.

"Watch your step!" he cried, nimbly avoiding the attentions of a
ground-rattler which tried to caress his ankle from under a saw-palmetto.

With a shudder I gave the deadly little reptile room and floundered
forward a prey to exhaustion, melancholy, and red-bugs. A few buzzards
kept pace with me, their broad, black shadows gliding ominously over the
sun-drenched earth; blue-tail lizards went rustling and leaping away on
every side; floppy soft-winged butterflies escorted me; a strange bird
which seemed to be dressed in a union suit of checked gingham, flew from
tree to tree as I plodded on, and squealed at me persistently.

At last I felt the hard coquina under foot; the cool blue shadow of the
hills enveloped me; I slipped off my pack, dumped it beside a little rill
of crystal water which ran sparkling from the hills, and sat down on a
soft and fragrant carpet of hound's-tongue.

After a while I drank my fill at the rill, bathed head, neck, face and
arms, and, feeling delightfully refreshed, leaned back against the
fern-covered slab of coquina.

"What are you doing?" I demanded of Mink who was unpacking the kit and
disengaging the moving-picture machine.

"Gettin' ready," he replied, fussing busily with the camera.

"You don't expect to see any cave people here, do you?"