ent for the opposite shore. The
night was so still and lovely, my black statues looked so dream-like at
their posts behind the low earthwork, the opposite arm of the causeway
stretched so invitingly from the Rebel main, the horizon glimmered so
low around me,--for it always appears lower to a swimmer than even to
an oarsman,--that I seemed floating in some concave globe, some magic
crystal, of which I was the enchanted centre. With each little ripple of
my steady progress all things hovered and changed; the stars danced and
nodded above; where the stars ended the great Southern fireflies
began; and closer than the fireflies, there clung round me a halo of
phosphorescent sparkles from the soft salt water.

Had I told any one of my purpose, I should have had warnings and
remonstrances enough. The few negroes who did not believe in alligators
believed in sharks; the sceptics as to sharks were orthodox in respect
to alligators; while those who rejected both had private prejudices
as to snapping-turtles. The surgeon would have threatened intermittent
fever, the first assistant rheumatism, and the second assistant
congestive chills; non-swimmers would have predicted exhaustion, and
swimmers cramp; and all this before coming within bullet-range of any
hospitalities on the other shore. But I knew the folly of most alarms
about reptiles and fishes; man's imagination peoples the water with many
things which do not belong there, or prefer to keep out of his way,
if they do; fevers and congestions were the surgeon's business, and I
always kept people to their own department; cramp and exhaustion were
dangers I could measure, as I had often done; bullets were a more
substantial danger, and I must take the chance,--if a loon could dive at
the flash, why not I? If I were once ashore, I should have to cope with
the Rebels on their own ground, which they knew better than I; but the
water was my ground, where I, too, had been at home from boyhood.

I swam as swiftly and softly as I could, although it seemed as if water
never had been so still before. It appeared impossible that anything
uncanny should hide beneath that lovely mirror; and yet when some
floating wisp of reeds suddenly coiled itself around my neck, or some
unknown thing, drifting deeper, coldly touched my foot, it caused that
undefinable shudder which every swimmer knows, and which especially
comes over one by night. Sometimes a slight sip of brackish water would
enter my