urred to me I felt it
as a welcome relief, and stepping silently back into the shadow retraced
my course without having awakened a soul. The vividness with which I can
now recall that scene is to me one of the marvels of memory.

Getting my bearings again with some difficulty, I now made a wide detour
to the left, in the hope of passing around this outpost and striking the
river beyond. In this mad attempt I ran upon a more vigilant sentinel,
posted in the heart of a thicket, who fired at me without challenge. To a
soldier an unexpected shot ringing out at dead of night is fraught with an
awful significance. In my circumstances--cut off from my comrades, groping
about an unknown country, surrounded by invisible perils which such a
signal would call into eager activity--the flash and shock of that firearm
were unspeakably dreadful! In any case I should and ought to have fled,
and did so; but how much or little of conscious prudence there was in the
prompting I do not care to discover by analysis of memory. I went back
into the corn, found the river, followed it back a long way and mounted
into the fork of a low tree. There I perched until the dawn, a most
uncomfortable bird.

In the gray light of the morning I discovered that I was opposite an
island of considerable length, separated from the mainland by a narrow and
shallow channel, which I promptly waded. The island was low and flat,
covered with an almost impenetrable cane-brake interlaced with vines.
Working my way through these to the other side, I obtained another look at
God's country--Shermany, so to speak. There were no visible inhabitants.
The forest and the water met. This did not deter me. For the chill of the
water I had no further care, and laying off my boots and outer clothing I
prepared to swim. A strange thing now occurred--more accurately, a
familiar thing occurred at a strange moment. A black cloud seemed to pass
before my eyes--the water, the trees, the sky, all vanished in a profound
darkness. I heard the roaring of a great cataract, felt the earth sinking
from beneath my feet. Then I heard and felt no more.

At the battle of Kennesaw Mountain in the previous June I had been badly
wounded in the head, and for three months was incapacitated for service.
In truth, I had done no actual duty since, being then, as for many years
afterward, subject to fits of fainting, sometimes without assignable
immediate cause, but mostly when suffering from exposure,