Paddling under Palmettos — page 117: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

110 Paddling Under Palmettos. credit, I had sense enough left to drop the paddle and push my gunforward. It was a Winchester, the best gun I ever handled, and as true as steel. Judge of my astonishment just then to see the captain poke his head and shoulders out of the thicket not twenty feet away, to all appearances, from where the deer stood. The animals had by this time noticed me, but they showed little signs of fear. It was quite evident that the captain did not know of their pres- ence until he saw me standing there with my gun at my shoulder. I picked out the fellow with the noblest pair of horns and let drive, for 1 had never been able to get a good pair of antlers on a Florida deer before then. He dropped, and the rest turned to make off. My game sprang to his feet, but be- fore he had made two leaps I had fired again, and once more he went down, this time to rise no more. It was pretty late to send a shot after the others, but I did it, and felt rather than saw that the bullet had gone home. “The captain, at my first shot had leaped back in the thicket, and I could hear him crashing along. I knew he was trying to reach the runway before the Gomichbooks (E(@) m