Once in the boat with its sea-begrimed sails, Helen began to take in the beauty of the view. Far out in the harbor, Sumter, the unconquerable, looked like a little black box floating on the water. Cumming’s Point was on the right, Moultrie on the left, and the famous hundred pines, so tall that they were seen first of all by the ships at sea, were near at hand on James’ Island. These were the charmed shores of which she had dreamed so often, and now she saw for herself the long low islands fringed with dense deep forests, of palmetto and live oak. The waving salt marshes, too, now sought, now deserted by the sea, seemed familiar, and the deep estuaries and the silver ribboned streams. As the boat moved swiftly over the river, Joe told of the winter residences of the rich planters that lined the banks farther up, of the golden rice fields and the snowy drifts of sea island cotton, of how the teal and mallard duck and wild geese came from the great lakes and wintered in the marshes, and fish swarmed the channels through the rice fields. Deer there were in the forest, too, and tough-necked alligators, which had to be pulled out of the mud when the rice fields dried up in the spring. Emboldened by her silence, he described the great Christmas festival, as it used to be, when for weeks the servants in the great houses had been busy. The river was deserted now, but once sailing crafts of all kinds made the Ashley look like a blue heaven filled with white-winged gulls, and from every bank and field came the song of the happy laborers. Time was when large schooners, fresh from the rice fields along the banks, were making for the Cooper River wharves, and barges laden with snowy cotton bales were being towed to the city. Captain Dillard himself met her on James’ Island. Colonel Masters’ messenger had found him. “He is here!” she cried, as soon as she saw the captain’s face. “Is he—is he—how is he?” “Why, Miss Preston, he is desperately wounded. I can’t imagine how you knew he was here.” “I knew he was ill, too,” she murmured. “Then an angel of God must have told you, for it only happened a few days ago, and we have kept it absolutely secret.” “A little bird told me,” she answered, smiling. “They almost captured him, but our men heard the firing. Two negroes were dead in the boat, and he had emptied his revolver and was running for the bushes. They shot him as he made a dash for the woods.” “Does he know anyone?” “Absolutely no one, and nothing. He is wildly delirious at times, but here we are. Colonel Masters wrote me that you had a right to see him. I shall await your wishes.” “I will go in now.”