That evening we had a cold bed; but the storm blew out in the night, and the next day the sun was as hot as summer, and the wind a point to the east.  Shalah once again was steersman, for we were inside some very ugly reefs, which I took to be the beginning of the Carolina keys.  On shore forests straggled down to the sea, so that sometimes they almost had their feet in the surf; but now and then would come an open, grassy space running far inland.  These were, the great savannahs where herds of wild cattle and deer roamed, and where the Free Companions came to fill their larders.  It was a wilder land than the Tidewater, for only once did we see a human dwelling.  Far remote on the savannahs I could pick out twirls of smoke rising into the blue weather, the signs of Indian hunting fires.  Shalah began now to look for landmarks, and to take bearings of a sort.  Among the maze of creeks and shallow bays which opened on the land side it needed an Indian to pick out a track.

The sun had all but set when, with a grunt of satisfaction, he swung round the tiller and headed shorewards.  Before me in the twilight I saw only a wooded bluff which, as we approached, divided itself into two.  Presently a channel appeared, a narrow thing about as broad as a cable’s length, into which the wind carried us.  Here it was very dark, the high sides with their gloomy trees showing at the top a thin line of reddening sky.  Shalah hugged the starboard shore, and as the screen of the forest caught the wind it weakened and weakened till it died away, and we moved only with the ingoing tide.  I had never been in so eery a place.  It was full of the sharp smell of pine trees, and as I sniffed the air I caught the savour of wood smoke.  Men were somewhere ahead of us in the gloom.

Shalah ran the sloop into a little creek so overgrown with vines that we had to lie flat on the thwarts to enter.  Then, putting his mouth to my ear, he spoke for the first time since we had left James Town.  “It is hard to approach the Master, and my brother must follow me close as the panther follows the deer.  Where Shalah puts his foot let my brother put his also.  Come.”

He stepped from the boat to the hill-side, and with incredible speed and stillness began to ascend.  His long, soft strides were made without noise or effort, whether the ground were moss, or a tangle of vines, or loose stones, or the trunks of fallen trees, I had prided myself on my hill-craft, but beside the Indian I was a blundering child, I might have made shift to travel as fast, but it was the silence of his progress that staggered me, I plunged, and slipped, and sprawled, and my heart was bursting before the ascent ceased, and we stole to the left along the hill shoulder.

Presently came a gap in the trees, and I looked down in the last greyness of dusk on a strange and beautiful sight.  The channel led to a landlocked pool, maybe a mile around, and this was as full of shipping as a town’s harbour.  The water was but a pit of darkness, but I could make out the masts rising into the half light, and I counted more than twenty vessels in that port.  No light was shown, and the whole place was quiet as a grave.