262 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH. 



silent conclave the affairs of their frozen realm, and was wondering 

 if they " for all their feathers, were a-cold," when suddenly a sound 

 arose ; it seemed to me to come from beneath the ice. It sounded 

 low and tremulous at first, until it ended in a prolonged yell. I was 

 appalled. Never before had such a noise met my ears. It seemed 

 more than mortal, so fierce, and amid such an unbroken solitude, 

 as if a fiend had blown a blast from an infernal trumpet. Pre- 

 sently I heard the twigs on shore snap, as if from the tread of some 

 animal, and the blood rushed back to my forehead with a bound 

 that made my skin burn, and I felt relieved that I had to contend 

 with things earthly, and not of spiritual nature; my energies 

 returned, and I looked around me for some means of escape. The 

 moon shone through the opening at the mouth of the creek by 

 which I had entered the forest, and considering this the best course, 

 I darted toward it like an arrow. 'Twas hardly a hundred yards 

 distant, and the swallow could scarcely excel my desperate flight ; 

 yet as I turned my head to the shore, I could see two dark objects 

 dashing through the underbush at a pace nearly double in speed 

 to my own. By this great speed, and the short yells which they 

 occasionally gave, I knew at once that these were the much 

 dreaded grey wolf. 



" I had never met with these animals, but from the description 

 given of them, I had but little pleasure in making their acquaint- 

 ance. Their untamable fierceness and the untiring strength which 

 seems part of their nature, render them objects of dread to every 

 benighted traveller. 



* With their long gallop, which can tire 

 The deer-hound's hate, the hunter's fire,' 



they pursue their prey — never straying from the track of their 

 victim — and as the wearied hunter thinks he has at last outstripped 

 them, he finds that they but waited for the evening to seize their 

 prey, and falls a prize to their tireless cunning. 



" The bushes that skirted the shore flew past with the velocity 

 of lightning, as I dashed on in my flight to pass the narrow open- 

 ing. The outlet was nearly gained ; one second more, and I would 

 be comparatively safe, when my pursuers appeared on the bank 



