But he could not stop where he was. The ground seemed slowly sinking under him. He plunged on blindly again, hoping that luck would bring him to some spot solid enough to wait there till daylight.
But that noisome lagoon seemed somehow to have surrounded him. Water covered the ground, from an inch to a foot deep, with knobby cypress “knees” sticking up everywhere. Splashing through he came to a growth of sharp palmetto. It might mean firmer ground. Indeed, the earth seemed to harden, as the growth grew thicker. Clumps of bear-grass and bay-trees loomed faintly. He trod on really firm ground, hammock-land, he thought, above high-river mark. Next to this might come the pine belt.
Much encouraged, he stumbled ahead through tall, coarse grasses to his hips. Dense timber loomed somewhere ahead. He was trying to make out pinecrests, when a sharp, startling “biz-z-z!” crackled from the darkness at his feet.
He stopped as if suddenly frozen. He dared not breathe nor move a muscle. He could not locate the sound, which had ceased. The snake might be within two feet, ready to strike at his slightest movement; it might be six feet away. Motionless as death, he stood listening, with crawling chills creeping down his spine. Nothing sounded but the piping and grumbling of the frogs. He had to risk it, and he gathered his forces and executed a desperate leap backward that carried him a couple of yards.
He landed unbitten. The rattlesnake buzzed again, but it was plainly at least five yards away. Lockwood continued to go backward, shivering and hot all at once.
This was no place to prowl in the dark. These hammock lands are always haunted by rattlers. He groped back almost to the edge of the wet ground, discovered a great branching willow, and clambered into its fork.
Here he settled himself, determined to travel no more in darkness. He was tired and wet through. There was a deadly chill in the air, smelling of fog and rotten water, and he felt the ache and shivering that might mean incipient malaria. It could not be long till dawn, and he huddled himself in the willow to wait with what stoicism he could summon.
In spite of the cramped position he must have dozed, for all at once he found the air full of pallid gray light, drifting and smeary with fog. The swamp stood up intensely green, the treetops brilliant with flowers, dripping with moisture, bearded with gray Spanish moss.
Stiff and weary he crawled down from the tree. By daylight he was disappointed to see that this was not true hammock land. It was merely a strip of higher ground in the swamp. Beyond it he perceived a stagnant bayou, where cypresses and gum-trees stood knee deep in water.
But the strip of high ground might lead somewhere. He broke a long stick and thrashed it through the weeds as he walked, to drive away snakes. The dry land rose to a small knoll, dipped to mud and water, then rose again, and all at once he espied the river through the trees ahead. But he was stupefied to find it running the wrong way.