{"product_id":"2940013708723","title":"South Moon Under","description":"Night entered the clearing from the scrub.  The low tangled growth\u003cbr\u003eof young oak and pine and palmetto fell suddenly black and silent,\u003cbr\u003eseeming to move closer in one shadowy spring.  The man told himself\u003cbr\u003ethere was nothing to fear.  Yet as he walked towards his cabin,\u003cbr\u003enaked and new on the raw sand, darkness in this place seemed to him\u003cbr\u003eunfriendly.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe thought, \"Time I get me a fence raised tomorrow, maybe 'twon't\u003cbr\u003eseem so wild, like.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLight still hung raggedly above the hammock west of the cleared\u003cbr\u003eacres.  Here and there a palm shook its head against the faint\u003cbr\u003eorange of the sky, or the varnished small leaves of a live oak were\u003cbr\u003efor a moment luminous.  There was an instant when the hammock\u003cbr\u003ereared back against the west; when the outline of each tree-top was\u003cbr\u003edistinct; when the clearing gathered about it the shreds of\u003cbr\u003etwilight.  Then there was no longer scrub or clearing or hammock.\u003cbr\u003eBlackness obliterated them with a great velvet paw and crouched\u003cbr\u003elike a panther on the cabin doorstep.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe man tested the security of the split rails that formed a\u003cbr\u003etemporary pen about his hogs.  The grey mule was hobbled and the\u003cbr\u003escrub milch cow tethered.  The chickens clacked and fluttered in\u003cbr\u003ethe coop that must hold them until a proper roost was built.  After\u003cbr\u003ethe fence was raised, they could all run free.  He stood by the\u003cbr\u003ecoop a moment.  His thoughts stirred uneasily in his mind, milling\u003cbr\u003elike the fowls.  He could not be sure that he had done well to move\u003cbr\u003ehis family here, across the river.  He had not made a good living\u003cbr\u003ein the piney-woods.  Only the knowledge of his native Florida wife\u003cbr\u003eand of his neighbours, her kin, had kept him to the few crops that\u003cbr\u003ewould yield on that grey shifting land.  His family of five was of\u003cbr\u003ean age now to help with the crops.  He had exchanged pine-land for\u003cbr\u003escrub, with a precarious fringe of hammock.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Florida scrub was unique.  The man Lantry recognized its\u003cbr\u003equality as well as its remoteness.  There was perhaps no similar\u003cbr\u003eregion anywhere.  It was a vast dry rectangular plateau, bounded on\u003cbr\u003ethree sides by two rivers.  The Ocklawaha, flowing towards the\u003cbr\u003enorth, bounded it on the west.  At the north-west corner of the\u003cbr\u003erectangle the Ocklawaha turned sharply at right angles and flowed\u003cbr\u003edue east, joining, at the north-east corner, the St. Johns River\u003cbr\u003ewhich formed the eastern demarcation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWithin these deep watery lines the scrub stood aloof, uninhabited\u003cbr\u003ethrough its wider reaches.  The growth repelled all human living.\u003cbr\u003eThe soil was a tawny sand, from whose parched infertility there\u003cbr\u003ereared, indifferent to water, so dense a growth of scrub pine--the\u003cbr\u003eSouthern spruce--that the effect of the massed thin trunks was of a\u003cbr\u003elimitless, canopied stockade.  It seemed impenetrable, for a man-\u003cbr\u003ehigh growth of scrub oak, myrtle, sparkleberry and ti-ti filled the\u003cbr\u003einterstices.  Wide areas, indeed, admitted of no human passage.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn places the pines grew more openly, the sunlight filtered through\u003cbr\u003eand patches of ground showed bald and lichened.  The scrub was\u003cbr\u003esparingly dotted with small lakes and springs.  Around these grew a\u003cbr\u003edamp-loving hammock vegetation.  Or a random patch of moisture\u003cbr\u003eproduced, alien in the dryness, a fine stand of slash pine or long-\u003cbr\u003eleaf yellow.  These were known as pine islands.  To any one\u003cbr\u003estanding on a rise, they were visible from a great distance.","brand":"WDS Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47068915859696,"sku":"2940013708723","price":3.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940013708723_p0.jpg?v=1763584240","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940013708723","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}