Two strokes of the oars were all that was needed to cross over. The tender was tied to a stump, and Eliot and Drew plunged into a cypress swamp, where a greenish light filtered through the trees to fall in circles on primeval ferns and tree trunks, bent like knees. The cat answered their calls with an anguished scream from off to the right, close to water’s edge. They thrashed through the undergrowth, Eliot in the lead with the shotgun, and found Trajan half-drowned, his fur so matted that he looked as small and sleek as a baby muskrat, as he clung to a piece of sedge floating in a shallow pool. He must have leapt off the boat in his fright, latched onto the flotsam by sheer luck, and an eddy must have then swept it and him into the swamp. Drew splashed into the pool and picked him up; then he and Eliot rushed back to the tender, or rather, tried to rush through the muck and jumbles of stumps that bashed their legs, Trajan practically lifeless in Drew’s arms. They saw the tender ten yards ahead when the cat, jumping as if shocked back into life by an electrical jolt, let out a screech and tried to escape, his claws raking Drew’s shirt, drawing blood. An instant later, from out of the shadowy glades to their left, where the swamp rose to hard ground, a thing bolted straight for them; a thing big as a colt, with sable-black hair bristling and little red eyes in a huge head and tusks six inches long flashing in its jaws. Without thinking, Eliot swung the L. C. Smith and pulled the front trigger and the beast’s front legs flew out sideways, its snout plowing into the mud; immediately it was up and charging again, making a sound like nothing Eliot or Drew had heard before, half bellow, half squeal. Something in Eliot’s brain caused all movement to slow down. Though the animal was charging fast and wasn’t more than fifteen or twenty feet away, he could see clearly where to place his next shot, and he himself seemed to be moving with great deliberation as he aimed for the hump behind its lowered head and pulled the second trigger. The crash of the shot, and the wild boar—for now he could name what it was—went down hard, legs thrashing and blood spurting from both wounds, the red shockingly bright against the black hide. Eliot reloaded and fired twice more, blowing off half the boar’s head before it lay still.

When he and Drew got back to the boat, they were both so shaken they could barely gasp to Nathaniel and Will what had happened. Trajan was paralyzed by his ordeals.