climbs the long ascent and threads the darkest of the wood.
The first night I came it was starry; and it was singular to
see the starlight drip down into the crypt of the wood, and
shine in the open end of the road, as bright as moonlight at
home; but the crypt itself was proof, blackness lived in it.
The next night it was raining. We left the lights of Apia
and passed into limbo. Jack finds a way for himself, but he
does not calculate for my height above the saddle; and I am
directed forward, all braced up for a crouch and holding my
switch upright in front of me. It is curiously interesting.
In the forest, the dead wood is phosphorescent; some nights
the whole ground is strewn with it, so that it seems like a
grating over a pale hell; doubtless this is one of the things
that feed the night fears of the natives; and I am free to
confess that in a night of trackless darkness where all else
is void, these pallid IGNES SUPPOSITI have a fantastic
appearance, rather bogey even. One night, when it was very
dark, a man had put out a little lantern by the wayside to
show the entrance to his ground. I saw the light, as I
thought, far ahead, and supposed it was a pedestrian coming
to meet me; I was quite taken by surprise when it struck in
my face and passed behind me. Jack saw it, and he was
appalled; do you think he thought of shying? No, sir, not in
the dark; in the dark Jack knows he is on duty; and he went
past that lantern steady and swift; only, as he went, he
groaned and shuddered. For about 2500 of Jack's steps we
only pass one house - that where the lantern was; and about
1500 of these are in the darkness of the pit. But now the
moon is on tap again, and the roads lighted.