Outalisso motioned me to hurry away, and I departed with a palpitating heart, and plunged into the recesses of the forest, and regulated my course in the manner he directed. The moon was rising, and I could see to a considerable distance around. The rustling of the dry leaves among my feet often made me think that some one walked close behind me, and I scarcely dared to look back, lest I should see an uplifted tomahawk descending upon my head. I sometimes fancied I observed Thakakawerenté lurking among the brushwood, and stopped short till imagination conjured up his form in a different part of the forest, and rendered me irresolute which phantom I should endeavour to avoid.
I reached the tree sooner than I expected: it lay along the ground, and its immense roots projected from the trunk, at right angles, to the height of twelve or fourteen feet, their interstices being so filled with earth that it was impossible to see through them.
I sat down, and found the agitation of my spirits gradually subside under the tranquillising influence of the scene. Not a breath of wind shook the trees, the leafless and delicately-fibred boughs of which, when viewed against the cloudless sky, seemed like a sable network spread overhead. The nests which the birds had made the preceding summer still remained among the branches, silent, deserted, and unsheltered, making the loneliness of the forest, as it were, visible to the mind; while a withered leaf sometimes dropped slowly down--a sad memorial of the departed glories of the vegetable world. A small rivulet ran within a little distance of me, but its course was so concealed by long grass that I would have been aware of its existence by the murmuring of its waters only, had it not glittered dazzlingly in the moonshine at one spot, while flowing over a large smooth stone. When I looked into the recesses of the forest, I saw the trees ranged before each other like colossal pillars, and gradually blending their stems together, until they formed a dark and undefined mass. In some places, a scathed trunk, whitened with the moss of successive centuries, stood erect in spectral grandeur, like a being whom immense age and associations, riveted to long-past times, had isolated from the sympathies of his fellow-mortals. As the moon gradually rose on the arch of heaven, her light fell at different angles, and the aspect of the woods was continually changing. New and grander groups of trees came into view, and mighty oaks and chestnuts seemed to stalk forward, with majestic slowness, from the surrounding obscurity, and, after a time, to give place to a succession of others, by retiring amidst the darkness from which they had at first emerged. Tremors of awe began to pervade my frame, and I almost expected that the tones of some superhuman voice would break the appalling silence that prevailed in the wilderness around me.