The
place seemed one from which none who entered it could ever go out; and
there was no going farther in without plunging into that horrible mire.
I stood still, and looked and listened. Some strange noise, "bird or
devil," came from the depths of the wood. A flock of grackles settled in
a tall cypress, and for a time made the place loud. How still it was
after they were gone! I could hardly withdraw my gaze from the green
water full of slimy black roots and branches, any one of which might
suddenly lift its head and open its deadly white mouth! Once a fish-hawk
fell to screaming farther down the lake. I had seen him the day before,
standing on the rim of his huge nest in the top of a tree, and uttering
the same cries. All about me gigantic cypresses, every one swollen
enormously at the base, rose straight and branchless into the air. Dead
trees, one might have said,--light-colored, apparently with no bark to
cover them; but if I glanced up, I saw that each bore at the top a
scanty head of branches just now putting forth fresh green leaves, while
long funereal streamers of dark Spanish moss hung thickly from every
bough.
I am not sure how long I could have stayed in such a spot, if I had not
been able to look now and then through the branches of the under-woods
out upon the sunny lake. Swallows innumerable were playing over the
water, many of them soaring so high as to be all but invisible.
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