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.