‘Ho! ho! Stout Jem,’ I cried to myself, ‘mayhap, we are but now laying the same course; the gay schooner out upon the tilting sea, and he that loves her well amid the shady woods and green savannahs of the main. So we shall meet again, comrades—we shall meet again!’ In this merry mood I traversed several miles before I thought of refreshment or of rest. It was just as my limbs began to ache and my breath to come short, as I breasted a steep hill, that I came to a fair fountain gurgling from a rift in a low mossy rock. It was not an unknown well of the wilderness, for human hands had placed a doubled leaf, through which, as through a spout, the living water ran from the runnel, and tinkled out into a natural basin beneath. So here I sat me down and wiped the perspiration from my brow. It was a lonely spot, and I wondered whose hands had plucked the leaf and laid it in its place. From the basin I speak of, the water ran amid rustling reeds, and great floating leaves, and gaudy flowers, until it spread itself out into a shallow pool, half covered with greasy scum, but elsewhere as clear as the air above it. In the centre of the pool sat a little bird of the diver species, with the glossy neck and the bright beady eyes which I love in water-fowl. He took little notice of me, and I sat and watched him as he glided to and fro amid the floating leaves and twigs which had fallen from the trees. While thus occupied, I heard once or twice the distant bay as of a dog. ‘Ho!’ thought I, ‘the siesta is over, and Señors the dogs are the first astir.’