And as the last view of the schooner was all beautiful, so his last thoughts of her were all tender. He remembered no more against her the hardships of the voyage, the seasickness, the two gills of water a day. But that she had borne them faithfully through storms, that whether they slept or waked she had not failed them,--this he remembered. And his sister's death, and all his sufferings and errors, and the peace of soul which had come to him at last, were associated now and henceforth, with his memory of the ship swimming there in the illumined horizon. Only for a brief interval, like a wind that comes we know not whence, and goes again we know not whither, touching us with invisible perfumed wings, these thoughts swept over the boy, and passed as quickly. And he turned from gazing after the schooner to face the scenes before him. Nearer and nearer drew the boats to the island. Its woods and shores lay cool and tranquil in the evening light, and the troops there, half-hidden by the tall grass and the trees, were tinted with a gleam of romance. It was now fast growing dark. Clouds were gathering in the sky. From their edges the last hues of the sunset faded, the moon was hid, and a portentous gloom fell upon the waves. The cannon were still thundering at intervals. The shells flew screaming through the air, and fell bursting on the fort or in the woods. It was now so dark that the flash of the guns had become lurid and sharp, and the meteoric course of the projectiles could be traced by their fiery wake. Amid this scene the boats entered the cove, and as the prows struck, or before, the excited soldiers leaped out, regardless of mud and water. "Shouldn't wonder if somebody got a wet foot," said Tucket, in the midst of the plunging and plashing--himself in up to his hips. "'A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!' Here, Manly, take a grip of my coat tail. I'm longer legged than you." "I'm all right," said Frank. "I've no gun to carry, and I can get along." And he floundered on as fast as the deep, clinging ooze would permit. "This is what they call the sacred soil!" observed Harris. "Just the thing, I should say, to breed rattle-snakes and rebels." "I swan to man!" chimed in Tucket's voice from a distance,--for his long legs had given him an advantage in the general race,--"there ain't no shore after ye get to't. It's nothin' but salt ma'sh, all trod to pudd'n' by the fellers that have been in ahead of us. I thought we was to be _landed_; 'stead of that, we're swamped!" The men pushed on, through marsh and swamp, sometimes in mire and water knee-deep, and now in tall, rank grass up to their eyes; the darkness adding to their dismal prospect. "By Grimes!" mutters Jack Winch, "I don't think an island of this kind is worth taking. It's jest fit for secesh and niggers, and nobody else." "We must have the island, because it's a key to the coast," says Frank.