eloped in reeds, and at a loss which way to go, the soft
ripple of breaking waves struck my ear like sweet music. The sea was
telling me of its proximity. Carefully balancing myself, I stood up in
the cranky canoe, and peering over the grassy thickets, saw before me
the broad waters of Helena Sound. The fresh salt breeze from the ocean
struck upon my forehead, and nerved me to a renewal of my efforts to get
within a region of higher land, and to a place of shelter.

The ebbing tide was yet high, and through the forest of vegetation, and
over the submerged coast, I pushed the canoe into the sound. Now I rowed
as though for my life, closely skirting the marshes, and soon entered
waters covered by a chart in my possession. My course was to skirt the
coast of the sound from where I had entered it, and cross the mouths of
the Combahee and Bull rivers to the entrance of the broad Coosaw. This
last river I would ascend seven miles to the first upland, and camp
thereon until morning. The tide was now against me, and the night was
growing darker, as the faithful craft was forced along the marshes four
miles to the mouth of the Combahee River, which I had to ascend half a
mile to get rid of a shoal of frisky porpoises, who were fishing in the
current.

Then descending it on the opposite shore, I rowed two miles further in
the dark, but for half an hour previous to my reaching the wide
debouchure of Bull River, some enormous blackfish surged about me in the
tideway and sounded their nasal calls, while their more demonstrative
porpoise neighbors leaped from the water in the misty atmosphere, and so
alarmed me and occupied my attention, that instead of crossing to the
Coosaw River, I unwittingly ascended the Bull, and was soon lost in the
contours of the river.

As I hugged the marshy borders of the stream to escape the strong
current of its channel, and rowed on and on in the gloom, eagerly
scanning the high, sedge-fringed flats to find one little spot of firm
upland upon which I might land my canoe and obtain a resting-spot for
myself for the night, the feeling that I was lost was not the most
cheerful to be imagined. In the thin fog which arose from the warm water
into the cool night air, objects on the marshes assumed fantastical
shapes. A few reeds, taller than the rest, had the appearance of trees
twenty feet high. So real did these unreal images seem, that I drove my
canoe against the soft, muddy bank, repeatedly prompted t