66 NEIGHBOURS UNKNOWN 



treachery of the slough, lay prone above the 

 water-holes for a portion of their length, and 

 then turned skyward, ineffectually, as if too 

 late awakened from their sluggish dreams. 

 The roots of the trees were half uncovered 

 immense, coiled, uncouth, dull-coloured shapes, 

 like monsters struggling up from the teeming 

 primeval slime. 



In truth, there was a suggestion of some- 

 thing monstrous in all that the eye could see 

 in Black Swamp. The heavy, indeterminate 

 masses of dark mud, or patches of black water, 

 lying deep between and under the contortions 

 of the roots ; the thick, grey rags of dead 

 cedar-bark ; the rotting stumps, some up- 

 rooted and half engulfed in the inert morass ; 

 the overpowering windless shadow, which 

 lay thick as if no sound had ever jarred it ; 

 above all, the gigantic tangle of trunks and 

 roots, stagnantly motionless, with the strained 

 stillness that is not of peace, but of a night- 

 mare. From a branch of one of the sullen 

 trunks hung a globe of lightest-grey papery 

 substance, with a round hole in the bot- 

 tom of it. In and out of this hole moved 

 two venomous streams of black-and-white 

 hornets. 



Suddenly it seemed as if the spirit of the 

 monstrous solitude had taken substance, and 



