ind him in the swamp the wood-birds
remained, the gray squirrel still barked and leaped from tree to tree,
the raccoon came down to fish, the plundering owl still hid himself
through the bright hours, and the chilled snake curled close in the
warm folds of the hanging moss. Nine feet of water below. In earlier
days, to the northward through the forest, many old timbers rejected
in railway construction or repair, with dead logs and limbs, had been
drifted together by heavy rains, and had gathered a covering of soil;
canebrake, luxurious willow-bushes, and tough grasses had sprung up on
them and bound them with their roots. These floating islands the
flood, now covering the dense underbrush of the swamp, lifted on its
free surface, and, in its slow creep southward, bore through the
pillared arcades of the cypress wood and out over the submerged
prairies. Many a cowering deer in those last few days that had made
some one of these green fragments of the drowned land a haven of
despair, the human castaway left unharmed.

Of all sentient creatures in that deluge he was suffering most. He
was gaunt and haggard with watching. The thought of pursuit bursting
suddenly around him now fastened permanently upon his imagination. He
feared to sleep. From the direction of the open water surprise seemed
impossible; but from the forest! what instant might it not ring with
the whoop of discovery, the many-voiced halting challenge, and the
glint of loaded Winchester? And another fear had come. Many a man not
a coward, and as used to the sight of serpents as this man, has never
been able to be other than a coward concerning them. The pot-hunter
held them in terror. It was from fear of them that he had lighted his
torch the night of his bivouac in the swamp. Only a knowledge of their
ordinary haunts and habits and the art of avoiding them had made the
swamp and prairie life bearable. Now all was changed. They were driven
from their dens. In the forest one dared not stretch forth the hand to
lay it upon any tangible thing until a searching glance had failed to
find the glittering eye and forked tongue that meant "Beware!" In the
flooded prairie the willow-trees were loaded with the knotted folds of
the moccasin, the rattlesnake, and I know not how many other sorts of
deadly or only loathsome serpents. Some little creatures at the bottom
of the water, feeding on the soft white part of the round rush near
its root, every now and then cut a stem