Sick and dizzy, and with a horror on his mind, he staggered back with the heavy drowse on all his faculties, through the tortuous lane of cotton-bales, and sinking down on one of them, fell into his former lethargy. He did not sleep through the night, but lay in utter torpor, thinking of nothing, fearing and hoping nothing, only vaguely conscious of where he was, and of the forms around him. Overstrung for many years with the unnatural toils of a slave, and still more tensely overstrung with the terrible labors of his journey through the morass—overstrung both in body and spirit, as few but slaves ever are—he had sunk back, now that a season of relaxation had come, into lassitude as excessive as were the fatigues and agitations of which it was the reaction. Safe for the present, with no immediate stimulus to urge him into activity, he lay, body and spirit, as in the sentient sleep of the tomb. Toward morning he sank away again into a heavy, dreamless slumber. Once during the day he dreamed that he was aroused by some one whom he did not recognize, and bidden to come along and get something to eat. In his dream he tried to shake the stupor from his bleared eyes, which even the dim light among the bales pained, and to obey. But the drowse was heavy upon him, and he could only mumble out that he didn’t want to eat, and the dream instantly dissolved in oblivion. He was left undisturbed, for his captor was not without pity for him, and saw that he was terribly fatigued. But late that night, when midnight was two hours gone, and the moon was westering palely from the sky, the trump of Liberty or Death sounded again in the ear of the fugitive, and his spirit arose from its tomb. A hand shook him, a voice shouted in his ear that they were near the city, and instantly springing to his feet, with fresh blood leaping through his veins, with new pulses throbbing in his heart, and all his faculties awake and alive, and armed with their utmost cunning, their fullest courage, and their most desperate resolution, he followed his captor out on deck. The boat was within a mile of the city, which lay beyond a forest of masts and hulls, and scattered lights hung in the rigging, or glimmering on the levee, dark and silent, with its roofs and spires massed against the purple sky, and glittering in the moon. The night was hot and still, and a heavy languor hung over the great breadth of regular rolling swells. Ships lay at anchor all about the stream, lifting with the lifting of the surge, and here and there a flat-boat with lights on board, and the men plying their long sweeps, lazily steered its way on the drift between the hulls. Antony watched the scene, with his heart fiercely beating at the thought of the coming trial.