228 WILD SCENES AND SONG-BIBDS. 



Nothing more was said between us, and the party launched 

 out into the darkness, in single file, followed by myself, with 

 my host's own rifle on half-cock and at the present. The rain 

 had ceased, but a strong wind was still blowing that troubled 

 the broad waters of the Ohio with a strange tumult. There 

 seemed a dusky portent in the swiftly-drifting clouds and 

 wail of the departing storm, that truly comported with the 

 bleak characteristics of the gloomily-pictured scene. The 

 forest in the back ground, a lofty mass of impenetrable 

 blackness ; the small opening in which stood the cabin and 

 the petty wood-yard, faintly felt rather than defined to the 

 vision ; the great river roaring and lashed upon the shelving 

 bank, seen dimly, as we see visions through deep mists that 

 go fading through the uttermost abyss : the bad, ferocious 

 men about me, and no star in all the funereal heavens I 

 such a sense of God-forsaken desolation as came over me on 

 the first moments in which I stepped out into this scene, had 

 never before in my whole life overtaken me amidst all its 

 turbulent exigencies. 



But that I had no time for sentimentalizing, soon became 

 apparent ; for, I found that these fellows were all the time 

 attempting to surround, or get behind me. It required all 

 my resolution and wariness to prevent this ; but, as I always 

 stood apart from them, and always carried the rifle in one 

 significant position, they were content, after having dragged 

 the boat up to a point which I had marked out as one that 

 could be commanded from a narrow port-hole in the cabin, 

 which they called a window to pick up the splinters of 

 cord-wood and drift which lined the shore, and carry them 

 in the same order of procession back to the cabin. 



I never before until this night, realized what the struggle of 

 will with the Demon of massacre meant 1 Such tense-strung 

 nerve, such vigilant strain of sense would exhaust the very 

 Lucifer himself, if long protracted. The instinct of murder 

 is the most dull-lipped and dogged of all those extravagant 

 passions that beset mankind. The Wolf is the prototype of 



