nt
out, no one can ever know. He was bareheaded and barefooted. One
cannot swim in boots; without them, even one who has never dared learn
how may hope to swim a little.

In the darkness he drew alongside the lugger, rose, balanced
skilfully, seized his moment, and stepped safely across her gunwale. A
slight lurch caused him to throw his arms out to regain his poise; the
line by which he still held the canoe straightened out its length and
slipped from his grasp. In an instant the pirogue was gone. A glimmer
of lightning showed her driving off sidewise before the wind. But it
revealed another sight also. It was dark again, black; but the outcast
stood freezing with horror and fright, gazing just in advance of his
feet and waiting for the next gleam. It came, brighter than the last;
and scarcely a step before him he saw three great serpents moving
towards the spot that gave him already such slender footing. He
recoiled a step--another; but instantly as he made the second a cold,
living form was under his foot, its folds flew round his ankle, and
once! twice! it struck! With a frantic effort he spurned it from him;
all in the same instant a blaze of lightning discovered the maimed
form and black and red markings of a "bastard hornsnake," and with one
piercing wail of despair, that was drowned in the shriek of the wind
and roar of the thunder, he fell.

A few hours later the winds were still, the stars were out, a sweet
silence had fallen upon water and wood, and from her deck the watchmen
on the steamer could see in the north-eastern sky a broad, soft,
illumination, and knew it was the lights of slumbering New Orleans,
eighteen miles away.

By and by, farther to the east, another brightness began to grow and
gather this light into its outstretched wings. In the nearest wood a
soft twitter came from a single tiny bird. Another voice answered it.
A different note came from a third quarter; there were three or four
replies; the sky turned to blue, and began to flush; a mocking-bird
flew out of the woods on her earliest quest for family provision; a
thrush began to sing; and in a moment more the whole forest was one
choir.

What wonderful purity was in the fragrant air; what color was on the
calm waters and in the deep sky; how beautiful, how gentle was Nature
after her transport of passion! Shall we ever subdue her and make her
always submissive and compliant? Who knows? Who knows what man may do
with her when once he