In an instant he was up to his middle in mud and water. He seized the prickly branches coiling about and above him; he gasped in prayerful pleading, the home teaching still strong in him; but there was no answer, save the crooning night-birds and the croaking frogs. Slimy things touched his torn flesh; whirring birds shot past him, disturbed in their night perches. The deadly odor, pungent and nauseous, of a thousand exhaling herbs, filled his nostrils. The darkness grew, instinct with threatening forms. He gasped, struggled, and in a fervent outburst of thanksgiving regained the dank mound. Ah, there was life on that! human life. Jones slept, the stertorous sleep of delirium. He murmured brokenly. Dick was too terrified to distinguish what he said. The blaze of the pine knot flared from side to side as the sighing breeze arose from the brackish pools, protesting the vitality of even this moribund hades. Ah! if he could but lie down and bury his face. The horses? They were feeding tranquilly yonder, standing up to their knees in mosses and water. The lines that tied them were long. They could move about. This was some comfort. They were more human than the dreadful specters that filled the place. Ah! the blessed, blessed light that flamed out from the merry pine-torch; he didn't wonder that half the Eastern world worshiped fire. He adored it--blessed, blessed fire--the sign of God, the beacon of the human. Hark! What half-human--or rather wholly inhuman--sounds are these that alternate in unearthly measure? Surely animal nature has no voice so strident, vengeful, odious. Can it be animals of prey? No. The Virginia forests are dangerous only in snakes. Snakes? Ah, yes! He shrinks into shadow against the oak at this suggestion; snakes? the deadly moccasin, that prowls as well by night as day. Ugh! what's this at his feet--soft, clammy, shining in the flaring light? He leaps upon the smooth tree-trunk, growing slantwise instead of perpendicular. What if the torch and the odor of flesh should draw the snakes to the sleeper? The flame flares in wide, lurid curves, revealing the outlines of the sleeping man. Heavens, what a terrible face! He moves in spasmodic contortions. He is smothering. The veins of his neck will break if he is not awakened.