Nevertheless, he hated the swamp. Vaguely he imagined it peopled with evil spirits. The tall crabwood trees standing in clusters threw deep shadows over the blackish-brown water, giving it an indescribably dreary and sinister appearance. Here and there, out of the slimy ooze sprang huge tree ferns. No shrieking of parrots or howling of monkeys in this cheerless spot. Nothing but dead leaves and treacherous mud, without the stir of a leaf or the twitter of a bird to break the brooding silence. It might have been a lost fragment flung off from a vanished world.