Then the barren islands, strewn with stone and mussel-shells glistening in the sunshine, over which in a gale the waves made a clean sweep, rendered the navigation intricate; and the vessel had to be worked in and out, now scraping against rocky walls of sandstone, now grounding and churning up the bottom, till presently she floated in the bay beneath the firs.  There a dark shadow hung over the black water—­still and silent, so still that even the aspens rested from their rustling.

Out again into the sunshine by the wide mouth of the Green River, as the chart named the brook whose level stream scarce moved into the lake.  A streak of blue shot up it between the banks, and a shrill pipe came back as the kingfisher hastened away.  By the huge boulder of sarsen, whose shoulder projected but a few inches—­in stormy times a dangerous rock to mariners—­and then into the unknown narrow seas between the endless osier-beds and withy-covered isles.

There the chart failed; and the known landmarks across the open waters—­the firs and elms, the green knoll with the cattle—­were shut out by thick branches on either hand.  In and out and round the islets, sounding the depth before advancing, winding now this way, now that, till all idea of the course was lost, and it became a mere struggle to get forward.  Drooping boughs swept along the gunwales, thick-matted weeds cumbered the way; ‘snags,’ jagged stumps of trees, threatened to thrust their tops through the bottom; and, finally, panting and weary of poling through the maze, we emerged in a narrow creek all walled in and enclosed with vegetation.

Running her ashore on the soft oozy ground, we rested under a great hawthorn bush that grew at the very edge, and, looking upwards, could see in the canopy above the black interlaced twigs of a dove’s nest.  Tall willow poles rose up all around, and above them was the deep blue of the sky.  On the willow stems that were sometimes under water the bark had peeled in scales; beneath the surface bunches of red fibrous roots stretched out their slender filaments tipped with white, as if feeling like a living thing for prey.

A dreamy, slumberous place, where the sedges slept, and the green flags bowed their pointed heads.  Under the bushes in the distant nook the moorhen, reassured by the silence, came out from the grey-green grass and the rushes.  Surely Calypso’s cave could not be far distant, where she

       with work and song the time divides,
  And through, the loom the golden shuttle guides.

For the Immortals are hiding somewhere still in the woods; even now I do not weary searching for them.