The sound of the dripping paddles grew more persistent. Undoubtedly the dugout was drawing closer and closer. Phil could presently distinguish a black moving object ascending the stream; and it was this effort to move against the swift current that caused unusual exertion, and consequent splashing from time to time.

He watched it begin to cross over from the denser shadows along the other bank. Using his eyes to their limit he fancied he could just make out two moving figures in the coming boat. Phil wondered what form their discovery of the object of their search would take; and whether these two fellows might alone attempt to make prisoners of those aboard the motor boat.

All at once he noted that the dark, log-like looking water craft had come to a halt, so far as approaching the bank was concerned. The two men plied their paddles softly now, but only to keep from being carried down-stream by the ever restless current.

They had spied the tied-up craft, and were whispering together. Phil waited to see what they meant to do. If his hand unconsciously crept out toward the faithful Marlin gun, it was hardly with any idea that he meant to make use of the weapon; but instinct alone guided his move.

Ah! now they were once more moving. They had ceased to paddle, and the dugout began to glide down the river. They were apparently going away! Did that mean they expected to pass over the whole two miles between that point and the village of the lawless shingle-makers?

Now he could no longer see them. Tony was stirring again; and Phil believed it safe to send a whisper toward the swamp lad, desirous of seeking information from the one who ought to know.

“They have gone away, Tony!” he said, carefully; but it could not be that he feared arousing Larry, who slept on peacefully through it all, lost to the world.

“Yep, I reckoned they would,” came the immediate answer.

“But why did they drop back when they might have climbed aboard, and captured us while we slept?” Phil continued.

“Huh! not gone far. Phil wait, an’ see how!”

“Oh! is that it?” echoed the other, as a light began to dawn upon him; and he continued to sit there, watching for a sign.

Perhaps five minutes passed. Phil had no means for marking the flight of time, and doubtless it seemed much more than that to him.

Then he suddenly saw something a little distance down the stream, that told him a fire had been started. Rapidly it grew in volume, until the entire vicinity was brilliantly illuminated; and he could easily see the two squatters moving back and forth, piling brush on the flames.

Of course Phil understood that this was a signal fire. These men, searching all along the river for the mysterious craft that was coming down toward the settlement from the hostile country above, had doubtless arranged to call their fellows to the spot in case they made a discovery.

“It means the coming of the whole bunch, don’t it, Tony?” he asked, as he saw the flames shooting upward, so that the light might easily have been seen a mile or more away.

“That so, Phil,” replied the other, moodily. “I ’spect this same, yuh know. On’y hope McGee, he be with alluns.”

Tony was certainly nervous, which was a queer thing; for ordinarily the swamp boy seemed to be as cool and self-possessed as an Indian brave, who thought it a blur on his manhood to display emotion in the face of his enemies.

Some time passed. The fire was kept burning, though not quite so riotously as in the beginning. Evidently the two men believed that long ere this its reflected light on the clouds overhead must have been seen at the village; and doubtless the entire male population was even now on the way thither, following some strip of dry land that was well known to them.

“There, look, I can count four!” said Phil, with thrilling emphasis.

“Now six!” was the quick response of Tony.

Sure enough, the recruits were arriving very fast. Phil could see them come out of the gloom of the forest, and into the circle of light cast by the fire. All were men, and even at that distance he could mark the fact that they appeared to be of unusual height. But then the people up-river, who hated and feared the shingle-makers of the swamps, had told him they were giants, strapping fellows all.

“Oh! that must be McGee!”

This broke involuntarily from the lips of Phil as he saw a man of even greater stature than any of the others, stride out of the woods, and immediately beckon for the rest to gather around him.

“Yep, it is him!” breathed Tony, who also had his eyes glued on that tall, commanding figure, as though fascinated by its presence, even though he had been familiar with the same from infancy.

Phil was conscious of a queer sensation as he for the first time looked upon the man of whom he had heard so many strange conflicting stories. But long ago he had come to the conclusion that possibly half of the bad things said about the McGee by his enemies could hardly be true. They hated and feared him so much that his faults were undoubtedly magnified many fold; while his virtues remained unsung.

He would see for himself. And judging from the way things were coming on, the crisis could not be long withheld now.

That caused Phil to remember that he had a chum aboard the Aurora. It seemed hardly fair that Larry should be kept in utter ignorance up to the very moment when the mine were sprung. The shock must be all the more severe under such conditions; and Larry would not be saved any agony of mind by the delay.

So Phil leaned over and shook the sleeper.

“Let up on that, Lanky!” grumbled Larry, who had doubtless been dreaming he was once more with some of his comrades at home; “I ain’t agoin’ to move, I tell yuh. Get breakfast first, and then call me. Go ’way!”

But Phil only renewed his shaking.

“Wake up, Larry!” he called softly; “the shingle-makers have come to board us! Get a move on, can’t you?”

A startled exclamation, followed by a great upheaval, told that Larry had now grappled with the truth.

“W where, which, how, why? Tell me, Phil, what’s that fire doing down there? Oh! I hope now they ain’t getting it hot for us, the tar, I mean!” he gasped, as he stared in the quarter where all those moving figures could be seen between the blaze and themselves.

“Oh, rats! get that out of your mind, Larry!” observed Phil, though truth to tell, it had cropped up in his own brain more than a few times to give him a bit of worry.

“They begin tuh come this way!” said Tony, with a catch in his voice, as though he were keyed up to a nervous tension because of the situation.

Phil could see this for himself, because there was a general movement among the various figures around the signal fire.

Larry was heard moving restlessly. Perhaps he could not get it out of his mind that the fire had really been started so as to heat up the dreadful tar, with which he and his chum were to be smeared before the squatters made them into uncouth birds by the addition of a shower of feathers, taken from some old broken pillow; and then turned them loose to continue their voyage down-stream.

Yes, the gathered clan of the McGee was certainly marching in the direction of the tied-up motor boat. And at their head came the bulky figure of the giant leader.

Somehow, even in that minute of dreadful uncertainty, Phil was reminded of what he had read about some Highland chief leading his tartan clan to battle, a Rob Roy McGregor, it might be.

But he had to think quickly. Inside of a few minutes the squatters would have arrived alongside the motor boat; and the boys must expect to find themselves virtually prisoners of war; though they had come to this region in Dixie without the slightest hostile intent.

What then?

Phil steadied himself for the great task that he knew awaited him. No doubt he and Larry would be taken across the land to the squatter settlement, so that the women and children might gaze upon them; for something seemed to tell Phil that even now his identity might be known to at least McGee.

“Come, let’s light up our lanterns,” he said, getting to his feet; “if we’re going to have company we oughtn’t to receive them in the dark. Larry, you know where to find one; strike a match and give us some light.”

He purposely set his chum to doing something, knowing that it was the best way of reassuring Larry. And although the hands of the other trembled more or less as he went about getting the lighted match in touch with the turned-up wick of a lantern, he managed to accomplish the job in a fairly satisfactory manner.

They could hear the muttering of many voices, as the crowd drew near. Evidently the men had noted the springing up of the light, and were wondering whether they would be greeted with a discharge of firearms or not.

If, as most of them doubtless suspected, these people on the boat with whom the son of the McGee seemed to be associating in a queer fashion, were really and truly spies, sent down by their hated enemies above, to find out their weak points so that the sheriff might make the raid he had long threatened, then they might yet be forced to capture the craft by violence; and they were primed for a battle royal.