gigantic trees, bearded and bannered with Spanish moss. Where the cypress and the gums grew the ground was wet or under water, and here and there they came upon small ponds or lagoons, sometimes open, sometimes densely grown up with trees.
It was late afternoon now, and the light was dimming, though brighter than in the canes. In the still water of the lagoons Jolie saw the huge shapeless heads of alligators, while on the banks and on fallen logs sprawled many saurians, some of them twelve or fifteen feet in length. There were snakes, too, some mottled brown, some coppery red, and terrapins innumerable, and large, wide-winged, ghostly birds that flew without a sound. If that flower-strewn sun-lit forest through which they had ridden for so many miles had seemed to Jolie the Garden of God, this spectral, reptile-haunted swamp was the borderland of Hell.
Later, when they had made camp on a dry grassy knoll in the heart of this fastness, and the night had shut down, the place seemed more than ever the abode of fiends and of lost souls. Lachlan had told her of the wild music of the beasts in the great low-country swamps, but she had not imagined so fearful a chorus of howls and screams. Almayne and Lachlan made a lean-to of bark and pine boughs for her, and, being very tired, she lay down at once, while the men roasted venison over a small fire; and afterward, with Lachlan standing the first watch, she tried in vain to sleep.
