an. But we're
not friends over that other business of splitting on us about the
salmon."

"Better wait a bit, then, my lad," said Pete. "It aren't good to shake
hands with a man like me."

"But I say it is," said the other with emphasis. "The way you went
overboard with them heavy irons on, to try and save young master here,
sent my heart up in my mouth."

Nic, who had sat listening moodily to the whispered conversation,
suddenly looked up in a quick, eager way.

"Say that again," he whispered huskily.

"Say what agen?"

"Did Pete Burge jump in to save my life?"

"Course he did--like a man."

"Oh!" gasped Nic, turning to look Pete wonderingly in the face.

"Silence there!" roared the overseer savagely. "Do you think you've
come out here for a holiday, you insolent dogs?"

At the last words the three animals behind the speaker took it to
themselves, and began to bark.

"Down! Quiet!" roared the overseer, and the barking of the dogs and his
loud command came echoing back from a wood of great overhanging trees,
as the boat now passed a curve of the river.

Nic glanced at the overseer, then to right and left of him, before
letting his eyes drop on the swiftly-flowing river, to try and think out
clearly the answers to a couple of questions which seemed to be buzzing
in his brain: "Where are we going? How is this to end?"

But there was no answer. All seemed black ahead as the rapidly-coming
night.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.

IN ALLIGATOR LAND.

As the night grew darker, and Nic sat in the forepart of the boat in his
drenched clothes, which at first felt pleasantly cool, and then by
degrees grew colder until he shivered, his head grew clearer and he
became more himself. He was able to grasp more fully his position and
how hardly fate had dealt with him.

It was clear enough now; he had been sent off in that terrible blunder
as one of the salmon-poachers; and he was there, sold or hired to one of
the colonists, to work upon a plantation until he could make his
position known to some one in authority, and then all would be right.
He felt that it would be of no use to appeal to this brutal slave-driver
who had him and his fellow-unfortunates in charge. What he had to do
was to wait patiently and make the best of things till then.

His head was rapidly growing so clear now that he could piece the
disconnected fragments of his experience together, few as they were, and
broken up by his sufferings fr