APTER XXIII.

TWIFORD'S ISLAND.

Some piles of wood and an old wharf were at the river-side, and a little
scow, half filled with water, and with only a broken piece of paddle in
it, was the only boat the pungy captain could find. The merchant's buggy
was soon out of sight, and the wide, gray Nanticoke, several hundred
yards wide, and made wider by a broad river that flowed into it through
low bluffs and levels immediately opposite, was receiving the strong
shadows of approaching night, and the tide was running up it violent and
deep.

Long lines of melancholy woods shut both these rivers in; an osprey
suddenly struck the surface of the water, like a drowning man, and rose
as if it had escaped from some demon in the flood; the silence
following his plunge was deeper than ever, till a goatsucker,
noiselessly making his zigzag chase, cried, as if out of eternal gloom,
his solemn command to "_Whip_ poor Will." Those notes repeated--as by
some slave ordering his brother to be lashed or one sympathetic soul in
perdition made the time-caller to another's misery--floated on the
evening light as if the oars of Charon echoed on the Styx, and broken
hearts were crossing over.

Alone, unintimidated, but not altogether comfortable, Jimmy Phoebus
proceeded to bail out the old scow, and wished he had accepted one of
Jack Wonnell's hats to do the task, and, when he had finished it, the
stars and clouds were manoeuvring around each other in the sky, with
the clouds the more aggressive, and finally some drops of rain punctured
the long, bare muscles of the inflowing tide, making a reticule of
little pittings, like a net of beads on drifting women's tresses. As
night advanced, a puffing something ascended the broad, black aisle of
this forest river, and slowly the Norfolk steamboat rumbled past, with
passengers for the Philadelphia stage. Then silence drew a sheet of fog
around herself and passed into a cold torpor of repose, affected only by
the waves that licked the shores with intermittent thirst.

The waterman, regretting a little that he had not taken his stand at
Vienna, where human assistance might have been procured, and thinking
that the poison airs might also afflict him with Meshach Milburn's
complaints, fought sleep away till midnight, straining his eyes and ears
ever and anon for signs of some sail; but nothing drew near, and he had
insensibly closed his lids and might have soon been in deep sleep, but
that he suddenl