“Me too!” cried Jerry. “It feels as if a lot of knives were sawing my hands and face.”
“It’s the giant saw-grass!” called the professor. “It grows in this region. The wind is whipping the long blades into our faces. Stoop down, boys, or you’ll be badly cut!”
They tried to do this, but it seemed as if the saw-grass was all over. In the darkness they had plunged into a patch of the dreaded stuff. The serrated edges of the rush-like growth scarified their skin like knives, and the boys and the professor were soon bleeding from several places.
Dangerous indeed was the plight of the travelers. In the darkness, and with the storm at its height, they were entangled in the patch of saw-grass, and could not discover which way to escape from it. The wind lashed the keen edges across their hands and faces again and again.
“Stand still!” cried the professor. “The more we move the worse it is! Has any one any matches?”
“I have!” cried Bob, “but I don’t believe I can light ’em in this downpour.”
Bob tried, but with no success. Then Ned uttered a cry.
“This way!” he called as a flash of lightning illuminated the scene for a brief instant. “I can see the water!”
The others made their way toward the sound of his voice. Bewildered, however, as they were by the storm and dense blackness which followed the lightning flash, they rushed but the deeper into the terrible grass.
“Come on!” cried Ned, who, by good fortune had succeeded in reaching an open place near the water, where there was none of the sharp grass. “Move when you see the flashes!”
“Hurry to the boat!” called Mr. Snodgrass. “I hope it hasn’t slipped its moorings in the storm.”
That was a trick which the tempest had not played on the travelers. They found their craft safe, and were soon aboard and under the stout awning which kept off the fury of the wind and rain. In a moment Ned had found the switch that controlled the small electric lights on the boat, which were worked by a storage battery. Then in the security of the little cabin the four looked at one another.
“This is about the worst yet!” exclaimed Jerry, as he limped over to a stool and sat down. The storm made his wounded foot, which was not quite healed, hurt more than usual. “Your face is a sight, Bob. Looks as if a cat had been at you.”