Chapter XVII: Adrift

My unconsciousness resembled sleep. It was not that, but syncope. I had fainted through exhaustion.

Fortunately the cloak, still upon my shoulders, clung around the tree-trunk, and hindered me from slipping off. Otherwise I might have gone to the bottom without knowing it.

My syncope was of short duration, though how long I could not tell. I could guess at the time afterward from knowing the distance I must have drifted.

I awoke to find myself lying upon the log. It was afloat, as I could tell by its motion underneath me; and I supposed myself drifting down-stream.

As my senses became clearer I perceived that this was not the case. Although the log bobbed about, as I stirred upon it, I now saw that it was close to the bank, and held as if by a hawser.

It was dark all around me, darker than ever; but I could see that I was under the shadow of trees, whose moss-covered arms stretched out over the stream. The gleaming of fire-flies upon the bank above gave me no aid in reconnoitering the situation. Their false, fitful light only misled me.

After a time I discovered the cause of my having come to; and even recognized the spot. It was the same where I had made landing from the skiff, while eagle-shooting on the island.

There was the huge fallen cypress with its roots upon the bank and trunk slanting down into the river. Despite the darkness and the confusion of my ideas, I remembered it.

I was still lying along the log, having as yet made no attempt to leave it. I felt too weak for the effort. Fortunate that it was so; for soon after I discovered the singular manner in which I was moored. The skirt of my cloak, trailing upon the water, had caught in a snag of the cypress, and held fast. As the garment was also hooked to the log on which I lay, the latter had been arrested in its course, and turned round under the shelter of the tree, where the current ceased to act upon it. Had I started suddenly up, or made any incautious movement, I might have detached the chance fastening and gone adrift again, to be carried God knows whither. Perceiving this danger, I took my measures accordingly.

Gently hauling upon the hawser of soaked broadcloth, I succeeded in grasping one of the branches of the cypress, and drawing the log close to its trunk, I was enabled to crawl from one to the other.

I did not accomplish this without an effort; I had but one arm to work with, the left. My right hung useless by my side.

Scrambling along the slanting trunk, I got up to the level of the bank, and then dropping off, I staggered a step or two through the palmettoes, and fell prostrate to the earth.

For a time I felt utterly unable to recover my feet. I wondered at my weakness, and could not account for it. The mere fatigue could not have caused it. I knew that I was wounded. My helpless arm, and the pain in my shoulder, told me that I had received a stab; I had seen the knife that had given it; but in the darkness I did not know that much of the moisture bathing my body was my own blood. This it was that had so utterly enfeebled me.

I had just strength left to take off my coat, grope for the wound--though it was easily found--and bind it up in strips torn from my dripping shirt.

After that I fell back into a recumbent attitude. I could sustain myself in no other.

But for the discomfort caused by my wet clothes I could have gone to sleep, for I felt deathlike drowsy. Every thread was saturated, and, with only one arm, I could not wring them out. I succeeded, however, in expelling most of the water from my cloak, by pressing it with my feet against the trunk of a tree, and then spreading it over me, I lay swathed in dampness.

The night was not cold. It had been chill only in the breeze of the river. Under the shelter of the trees there was not a breath stirring; and with the heat of my body, I was soon surrounded by an atmosphere resembling a vapor-bath.

Soothed by its warmth, my drowsiness increased, and I gradually sunk into a slumber.

It was not sound nor natural, only the slumber of exhaustion. I awoke at intervals to a sort of half-consciousness, scarce knowing whether I was sleeping or waking.

Once I was aroused to a clearer comprehension. It was a sound that startled me. It appeared to be a shot, instantly followed by a shriek, like the cry of some one in extreme agony!

I thought there were voices afterward; and I lay for a long while listening, but I could hear only the constant "skirl" of the grasshoppers and tree-toads, with now and then the "glucking" of the great swamp-frog, and the hoot of the horned owl. The shot and the shriek may have been only a fancy--the dream of a disordered brain. I tried to think so, but could not. I had heard the first through my sleep; but the second rung in my awakened ear, as also the voices that succeeded it. I could not bring myself to believe that I had not actually heard them.

I did not think of connecting these sounds with what had occurred to me on the flat. By that time Mr. Black and his boat would be miles away--far out of my hearing. I knew that some hours had passed since I had been pushed overboard. The boat going in the center current would have forged far ahead of me, and my floating log. Besides I had now been some time on the island.

I lay reflecting on what had occurred.

Though unable to account for the conduct of the ruffian, I did not attribute it to any deep design. I had simply crossed him in some whim, and I knew that for even so slight a cause life is often sacrificed on the Mississippi.

What design could he have in killing me? I could not think of any; not even a motive.

Kept awake by the stinging pain of my wound, I continued to reflect. I remembered the strange behavior of the skiffman Jake, and the statement he had made about strange sounds heard upon the island--"de debbil's island," as he called it. There appeared to be some truth at the bottom of what I had ridiculed as a superstition!

I slept no more for the remainder of that night. I was filled with horrid fear; and with joy I hailed the first gray glimmer of the moon, as it came slowly stealing through the festoons of Spanish moss, that curtained my ungrateful couch.