swamp. The torn roots, the decaying trunks, and the shattered
branches of the dead giants of the ancient wood, were dank with
water-moss. Rank poison vines writhed everywhere, and crept like vipers
beyond the deadly borders of the great Cypress Swamp. Through such dark
and tangled density as this the smoky torches, burning dimly around the
camp, could cast their light but a little way. And thus it was by
hearing and not by seeing, that they came at last upon the spot almost
by accident. They had scarcely got hurriedly down from their horses, and
hastily tied them to a swinging bough when the scene burst upon them--a
wild vision revealed by the dim flickering torchlight.

[Illustration: "A dark, confused ... writhing mass of humanity."]

There was a long, low shed of vast extent. It was covered with rough
boards, and upheld by tree-trunks which still bore the bark. There was
no floor other than the bare earth, and there were no seats other than
unhewn logs. Here, under the deep shadows of this great shed, all darkly
shut in by the black wilderness and dimly lit by a wide circle of
smoking, flaring torches, there surged a dark, confused, convulsed,
roaring, writhing mass of humanity. And there were many hundreds in that
shadowy multitude--swaying, struggling, groaning, laughing, weeping,
shouting, praying, dancing, leaping, and falling.

"It does not seem possible that there can be so many in all the
wilderness," said the doctor. "But they come from long distances, from
as far as fifty and sixty miles around. And they have been coming for
weeks--day and night--just like this."

He spoke sadly, and with deep feeling. He laid his firm, gentle hand on
David's shaking arm, knowing how the awful spectacle must affect the
sensitive boy. David instinctively drew nearer to his side feeling the
support of his calm, sane, strong presence, and began gradually to see
with clearer eyes, so that this awful vision became by degrees a more
awful reality.

"Listen!" cried the doctor. "They are beginning to sing!"

Ah, listen indeed! For a stranger, wilder chant than this which now
went swelling up from that frenzied, swaying mass of humanity surely
never stirred all that is most mystical in the soul of man! Pealing
grandly, awfully upward through the star-lit spaces of a grander temple
than ever was reared by human hands, it rolled heavenward, on and on,
and higher and higher, to the very dome of the firmament.

With the wild chant