by just a twig, and, fatigued with the exertion, drowsed
away awhile. Waking again, after a little, her fingers still fast upon
it, she drew it over, fixed it upright as she could, and spread her
petticoat about it at the risk of utter capsize. The soft sweet wind
beat against the sail as happily as if it had been Cleopatra's weft of
purple silk, and carried her on, while she lay back, one arm around her
jury-mast, and half indifferently unconscious again. She had meant, on
reaching the gunboats,--ah, inconceivable bliss!--to win her way with
her feet; with willowy graces and eloquent pantomime, to have danced
along the deck and into favor trippingly: now, if she should have
strength enough left to fall on her knees, it would be strange. She
clung to the crossbar in a little while from blind habit; the rest of
her body seemed light and powerless. She was neither asleep nor awake
now, suffering nothing save occasionally a wild flutter of hope which
was joy and anguish together; but all things began mingling in her mind
in a species of delirium while she gave them attention, afterwards slid
by blank of all meaning but beauty. The lofty cypresses on the edge
above loomed into obelisks, and stood like shafts of ebony against a
glow of sunrise that stirred down deep in the night; dew-clouds, it
seemed, hung on them, and lifted and lowered when their veils of moss
waved here and there; the glistering laurel-leaves shivered in a network
of light and shade like imprisoned spirits troubling to be free; but
where the great magnolias stood were massed the white wings of angels
fanning forth fragrances untold and heavenly, and one by one slowly
revealing themselves in the dawn of another day. It seemed as if great
and awful spirits must be leading this little being into light and
freedom.

So the river lapsed along, and the sun blazed, and a torture of thirst
came and went as it had come and gone before; and sometimes swiftly,
sometimes slowly, the veering winds and the pendulous tides carried the
wreck and its burden along. Flor had planned, before she started, that
all her progress should be made by night; by day she would haul up among
the tall rushes or under the lee of some stump or rock, and so escape
strange sail and spying eyes. But there had been no need of this, for no
other boat had passed up or down the river since she sailed. If there
had, she could no more have feared it. She stole by a high deserted
garden, the pali