low bushes on the long causeway
could scarcely be relieved against them, yet I knew where they ought to
be, and the more doubtful I felt about it, the more I put down my
doubts, as if they were unreasonable children. One can scarcely conceive
of the alteration made in familiar objects by bringing the eye as low as
the horizon, especially by night; to distinguish foreshortening is
impossible, and every low near object is equivalent to one higher and
more remote. Still I had the stars; and soon my eye, more practised, was
enabled to select one precise line of bushes as that which marked the
causeway, and for which I must direct my course.

As I swam steadily, but with some sense of fatigue, towards this
phantom-line, I found it difficult to keep my faith steady and my
progress true; everything appeared to shift and waver, in the uncertain
light. The distant trees seemed not trees, but bushes, and the bushes
seemed not exactly bushes, but might, after all, be distant trees. Could
I be so confident, that, out of all that low stretch of shore, I could
select the one precise point where the friendly causeway stretched its
long arm to receive me from the water? How easily (some tempter
whispered at my ear) might one swerve a little, on either side, and be
compelled to flounder over half a mile of oozy marsh on an ebbing tide,
before reaching our own shore and that hospitable volley of bullets with
which it would probably greet me! Had I not already (thus the tempter
continued) been swimming rather unaccountably far, supposing me on a
straight track for that inviting spot where my sentinels and my drapery
were awaiting my return?

Suddenly I felt a sensation as of fine ribbons drawn softly across my
person, and I found myself among some rushes. But what business had
rushes there, or I among them? I knew that there was not a solitary spot
of shoal in the deep channel where I supposed myself swimming, and it
was plain in an instant that I had somehow missed my course, and must be
getting among the marshes. I felt confident, to be sure, that I could
not have widely erred, but was guiding my course for the proper side of
the river. But whether I had drifted above or below the causeway I had
not the slightest clue to tell.

I pushed steadily forward, with some increasing sense of lassitude,
passing one marshy islet after another, all seeming strangely out of
place, and sometimes just reaching with my foot a soft tremulous shoal