228 
WILD SCENES AND SONG-BIRDS. 
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 ! — 
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 ! 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 
