During the interval of my unconsciousness, I had neither dream nor apparition. By this, I knew that my soul must have forsaken its earthly tenement. It may have been hovering above or around, but it was no longer within me. It had separated from my senses, that were all dead.
Dead, but capable of being restored to life, and haply a restorative was at hand, with one capable to administer it.
When my soul returned, the first perception I had was that I was up to my neck in water. I was in the pond, and in a recumbent position—my limbs and body under the water, with only my head above the surface, resting against the bank. A man was kneeling over me, himself half immersed.
My returning senses soon enabled me to tell who the man was—my faithful Jake. He had my pulse in his hand, and was gazing into my features with silent earnestness. As my open eyes replied to his gaze, he uttered an exclamation of joy, and the words: “Golly, Massa George! you lib—thank be to Gorramighty, you lib. Keep up ya heart, young massa—you’s a gwine to git ober it—sartin, your a gwine to git ober it.”
“I hope so, Jake,” was my reply, in a weak voice; but, feeble though it was, it roused the faithful fellow into a transport of delight, and he continued to utter his cheering ejaculations.
I was able to raise my head and look around. It was a dread spectacle that on all sides greeted my eyes, and there was plenty of light wherewith to view it. The forest was still on fire, burning with a continued roar, as of thunder or a mighty wind—varied with hissing noises, and loud crackling that resembled the platoon firing of musketry. One might have fancied it a fusilade from the Indians, but that was impossible. They must have long since retreated before the spreading circle of that all-consuming conflagration. There was less flame than when I had last looked upon it; and less smoke in the atmosphere. The dry foliage had been suddenly reduced to a cinder, and the twiggy fragments had fallen to the earth, where they lay in a dense bed of glowing embers.
Out of this rose the tall trunks, half stripped of their branches, and all on fire. The crisp scaling bark had caught freely, and the resinous sapwood was readily yielding to the flames. Many had burned far inwards, and looked like huge columns of iron heated to redness. The spectacle presented an aspect of the infernal world.
The sense of feeling, too, might have suggested fancies of the same region. The heat was intense to an extreme degree. The atmosphere quivered with the drifting caloric. The hair had crisped upon our heads—our skins had the feel of blistering, and the air we inhaled resembled steam from the ’scape pipe of an engine.
Instinctively I looked for my companions. A group of a dozen or more were upon the open ground near the edge of the pond, but these were not all. There should have been nearer fifty. Where were the others? Had they perished in the flames? Where were they?
Mechanically, I put the question to Jake.