Herewith she bent and touched me and, waking, I saw this that touched me was no more than the leafy end of a branch 'neath which I chanced to lie,--but pendant from this swaying branch I espied a monstrous shape that writhed toward me in the dimness; beholding which awful, silent thing I leapt up, crying out for very horror and staying but to snatch my gun, sped from this evil place, nigh sick with dread and loathing.
The moon was up, dappling these gloomy shades with her pure light and as I sped, staring fearfully about me, I espied divers of these great serpents twisted among the boughs overhead, and monstrous bat-like shapes that flitted hither and thither so that I ran in sweating panic until the leafage, above and around me, thinning out, showed me the full splendour of this tropic moon and a single great tree that soared mightily aloft to thrust out spreading branches high in air. Now as I approached this, I checked suddenly and, cocking my musket, called out in fierce challenge, for round the bole of this tree peeped the pallid oval of a face; thrice I summoned, and getting no answer, levelled and fired point-blank, the report of my piece waking a thousand echoes and therewith a chattering and screeching from the strange beasts that stirred in the denser woods about me; and there (maugre my shot), there, I say, was the face peering at me evilly as before. But now something in its stark and utter stillness clutched me with new dread as, slinging my musket and drawing pistol, I crept towards this pallid, motionless thing and saw it for a face indeed, with mouth foolishly agape, and presently beheld this for a man fast-bound to the tree and miserably dead by torture. And coming near this awful, writhen form, I apprehended something about it vaguely familiar, and suddenly (being come close) saw this poor body was clad as an English sailor; perceiving which, I shivered in sudden dread and made haste to recharge my musket, spilling some of my precious powder in my hurry, and so hasting from this awful thing with this new dread gnawing at my heart.
Presently before me rose steepy crags very wild and desolate, but nowhere a tree to daunt me. Here I halted and my first thought to light a fire, since the gloomy thickets adjacent and the sombre forests beyond were full of unchancy noises, stealthy rustlings, shrill cries and challengings very dismal to hear. But in a while, my fire burning brightly, sword loose in scabbard, musket across my knee and my back 'gainst the rock, I fell to pondering my dream and the wonder of it, of Joanna and her many noble qualities, of her strange, tempestuous nature; and lifting my gaze to the wonder of stars, it seemed indeed that she, though dead, yet lived and must do so for ever, even as these quenchless lights of heaven; and thus I revolved the mystery of life and death until sleep stole upon me.