the girls listened, clinging together, scarcely daring to breathe, and the cry was repeated, fainter and coming abruptly to an end.
“darry! darry!” cried amy, in a sudden, terrible fear. “that was his voice, jessie! he is in trouble! he may be hurt, dying——”
as though driven to recklessness by the thought, amy turned and dashed blindly ahead, sinking suddenly almost to her knees in mud and water.
jessie and nell dragged her out, only quick action saving them all from being sucked down into the merciless black slime.
“oh, i am sorry, jess—nell!” said amy, sobbing in her fright and remorse. “i might have killed you both! i won’t do it again. but, girls, we must find darry!”
“the ground is harder over here,” cried jessie, her words coming quick and staccato through chattering teeth. “come this way.”
she dashed madly through the underbrush and entangling vines, catching her clothes on bushes and tearing them recklessly. nell and amy followed her blindly, the echo of that haunting cry for help flogging them onward.
their hands and faces were scratched and bleeding, their clothes torn in a hundred places, and still they went on. once amy became so helplessly entangled in the rank undergrowth that nell and jessie were forced to stop and spend precious minutes in the effort to tear her loose.
again, jessie, setting the pace, missed her footing on the solid ground and sank into the yielding mud. luckily, amy and nell were close behind her, and with a strength born of desperation pulled her back to a safe footing.
at times they stopped and listened again for darry’s voice. but no repetition of that cry came to guide them, and they could only struggle on blindly, pantingly, trusting that another hundred yards would bring them to him.
still no sign of him, and they paused exhausted, to gather strength for a further search. they looked at each other for the first time and wanted to cry at the pitiful picture they made.
covered with mud, clothes torn, hair hanging stringy and wild from contact with twigs and bushes, faces scratched and bleeding, they themselves might easily have been mistaken for the ones in need of rescue.
but after that one startled look they returned frantically to darry’s need of help.
“we seem so utterly helpless,” amy cried despairingly. “we might wander around forever like this and never find him. we have nothing to guide us—nothing!”
“come on,” urged jessie. “i am sure the cry came from this direction. if we go on, we have a chance of finding him. if we stand still we have none.”
so on again, discouragement and despair growing as they pushed farther and farther into the tangled vegetation of the swamp.
at last, when even jessie had begun to acknowledge they had failed, they heard voices. they stopped short, fearful lest the owners of them might be some of the men and women from the hut in the swamp.
the voices were masculine and carefully guarded. creeping closer, amy suddenly gave a cry of delight and flung herself forward. when jessie and nell followed they found her in the act of embracing the astonished burd, while fol stood by looking on incredulously.
there were many questions to be asked and answered on both sides, but they hurried the explanations, goaded on by the thought of darry and his need of them.
the two boys, it seemed, had been hunting ceaselessly for their missing chum since the morning of the first day they had spent in the swamp, when darry had become separated from them and disappeared as completely as though he had been spirited away by gnomes.
at first they had not been alarmed, thinking that they must soon come upon him, but as the hours passed and still no sign of him, they had become greatly worried. that, said burd, was where the real search began.
“but we just heard him now!” cried amy. “he was calling for help, and it sounded as if he were a long distance off.”
burd nodded and rubbed the stubbly beard which had begun to put in an appearance, the result of two days of neglect.
“that was darry, all right,” he said. “if he had only kept on shouting we might have had some chance of finding him.”
“sounded to us as if that last cry was choked off,” said nell gravely.
“probably darry tried to yell again but they wouldn’t let him,” put in fol.
“who do you mean by ‘they?’” asked jessie. burd looked at her and saw how white her face was beneath the scratches and mud.
“the people in the hut out there in the swamp,” he answered. “did you see it as you came along?”
the girls assured him that they had noticed the hut and asked him eagerly what he and fol knew about the people who lived there.
“they seem a rough set, and that is all we know for a fact,” responded fol.
“we will tell you all about that hut later on,” said burd, turning eagerly toward that part of the swamp and forest which they had not already explored. “just now, i think we had better stir ourselves again. i have a feeling in my bones that we are getting close to darry.”
it occurred to jessie that the boys must want food after their two harassed days in the open, and she offered them some of the sandwiches they had brought along.
burd and fol accepted eagerly, but they would not let hunger delay them. they munched at the food as they plodded on through the swamp, hoping always that they would come upon darry’s trail.
“look here—see what i have found!” called jessie, suddenly, and she held up a piece of torn cloth that had caught upon a bush. she was trembling so with excitement that she could hardly speak.
“it is part of darry’s jacket!” she went on. “look, amy. you know it is, don’t you?”
“it is, it is!” cried amy, pressing the bit of cloth hysterically to her face. “darry, darry, what have they done to you? if they dared to hurt you i would——” she clenched her fist threateningly and burd took her by the arm, gently leading her on.
“come on. i have an idea,” he said eagerly. “that piece of cloth may mean a lot, if my suspicion is correct, jess. look here!”
he stooped and picked up some pieces of loose paper from the ground.
“these are from darry’s notebook. am i right, amy?”
amy took the pieces of paper and examined them.
“they come from darry’s notebook, all right,” she said. “he always uses that same blue paper in his notebook.”
“then he is marking a trail!” jessie’s voice was feverishly eager. “this is the first clue we have had. come on, let’s follow it.”
at burd’s suggestion, they scattered in several directions, searching eagerly, and it was nell who finally picked up the trail again some hundred feet further on. there were more loose sheets of the same bluish paper, and again they were identified by amy as belonging to the notebook that darry invariably carried with him.
the trail thus marked led sharply off from the path they had been following, diverging from it almost at a right angle. without hesitation the girls and boys prepared to follow this clue, even though it seemed to lead them continually deeper into the heart of the woods.
for a considerable distance the trail remained fairly plain. it was evident that whoever darry’s captors were, they had left his hands—or at least one hand—free, and in this way he had ingeniously contrived to mark out the winding path through the woods.
then, suddenly, all clues abruptly ceased. although they searched frantically for a long distance in all directions they found nothing that could tell them where darry had gone from there. once more he had disappeared utterly and completely.
“i suppose they found out what he was doing at this point,” said burd, gloomily. “tied his hands, probably. poor, old darry! now we are up a tree!”
without plan or direction, they wandered on, hoping less and less confidently as time went by that fate would reveal to them darry’s whereabouts.
at last, when they were almost dropping with fatigue, they came upon a little hut hidden in the dense foliage. they were suspicious of it at first, thinking it might be the property of people like those they had seen in the swamp. but, realizing finally that it was deserted, they approached warily.
“why, here is a radio set inside!” jessie suddenly called out, in the tone of one greeting an old friend. “come on in while i hear what it has to say.”
evidently she heard something unpleasant, for, as they crowded to the door of the hut, jessie turned toward them, the headphones dangling loosely from her fingers and a look of dread on her face.
“there is a fire!” she cried. “and it must be close to here.”
