Lost! O God, how should he find his brother?

Some strange bird out of the woods made mournful answer--"Never, never,
never!"

How should he face his mother?

"Never, never, never!" walled the bird again; and Amyas smiled
bitterly, and said "Never!" likewise.

The night mist began to steam and wreath upon the foul beer-colored
stream. The loathy floor of liquid mud lay bare beneath the mangrove
forest. Upon the endless web of interarching roots great purple crabs
were crawling up and down. They would have supped with pleasure upon
Amyas's corpse; perhaps they might sup on him after all; for a heavy
sickening graveyard smell made his heart sink within him, and his
stomach heave; and his weary body, and more weary soul, gave themselves
up helplessly to the depressing influence of that doleful place. The
black bank of dingy leathern leaves above his head, the endless
labyrinth of stems and withes (for every bough had lowered its own
living cord, to take fresh hold of the foul soil below); the web of
roots, which stretched away inland till it was lost in the shades of
evening--all seemed one horrid complicated trap for him and his; and
even where, here and there, he passed the mouth of a lagoon, there was
no opening, no relief--nothing but the dark ring of mangroves. Wailing
sadly, sad-colored mangrove-hens ran off across the mud into the dreary
dark. The hoarse night-raven, hid among the roots, startled the
voyagers with a sudden shout, and then all was again silent as a grave.
The loathy alligators lounging in the slime lifted their horny eyelids
lazily, and leered upon him as he passed with stupid savageness. Lines