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.
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