Raising a large stone, he kicked at the dirt underneath, then suddenly ceased his operations and listened.
Then in the dim light his face became ashen, turning a scar upon his cheek white, and his heart thumped like a drum. He let the rock fall back upon the treasure, and motioned to Pap and Mustard to follow, leading them four times around the walls and crisscross through the center and then back to the entrance.
“Listen, niggers!” Mobile chattered. “My Gawd, listen!”
Far across the swamp they could hear distinctly a steady repetition of three short sounds followed by a long, lowing bellow like a bull: “_Ow, ow, ow! Oo-oo-oo-o!_”
“_Nigger dogs!_” Mobile cried with a voice like a sob. “_Bloodhounds!_”
An uncontrollable sobbing seized the negro and his fright was pitiable. Mustard and Pap, having no experience with such dogs, looked at him uncomprehendingly.
Finally, Mobile dropped to the ground and listened. Then rising, he announced:
“A whole pack, niggers--dogs an’ men! We’ll never git outen dis swamp alive--dem dam’ dogs’ll gnaw our bones! Come on, less see kin we make it to de Massacre Bayou!”
They started on a straight line, running side by side.
Then within a hundred yards they faced a slough as large as a lake, no one knew how deep with mud and water. Taking a long detour around this, they looked back and in two miles of running, still found themselves in plain sight of the Kerlerac plantation house.
“Dat’s de las’ big puddle, niggers,” Mobile informed them. “Now go straight an’ wade eve’ything you come to!”
The ingenuity of the Spanish inquisition devised no tortures comparable to the possibilities of pain arising from a forced flight through a Louisiana jungle.
A vine trailing the ground for hundreds of yards in some mysterious manner wraps three times around a man’s leg, trips him, and leaves him to struggle with a bond which he cannot unwrap, cannot break, and cannot cut with a sharp pocket-knife.
Wild rose vines with thorns like spear-points and barbed like a fishhook snag the garments and the skin, and, like Shylock, demand their pound of flesh. Hidden in every puddle of water, the hard, sharp cypress knees lie ambushed in the mud like bayonets to impale anything which falls upon them.