from her mate, safely hid across 

 the creek. 



The weird, uncanny cry 

 rolled round under the 

 roof of limbs, and 

 seemed to wake a 

 ghost-owl in every 

 hollow bole, echoing 

 and reechoing as it 

 called from tree to 

 tree, to die away 

 down the dim, deep 

 vistas of the swamp. 

 The silent wings, the 

 snapping beaks, the eery 

 hoots in the soft gloom of 

 the great trees, needed the 

 help of but little imagina- 

 tion to carry one back to the threshold of an 

 unhacked world, and embolden its nymphs and 

 satyrs, that these centuries of science have hunted 

 into hiding. 



I wiggled above the bulge at the risk of life, 

 and was greeted at the mouth of the cavern with 

 hisses and beak-snappings from within. It was 

 [179] 



" She turned' and 

 fixed her big black 

 eyes hard on me." 



