midday
The youthful voyager went ashore , and for a long time lay stretched on the sand with his gun watching for wild-fowl . The woods were brilliant with flowers , blue larkspur , scarlet lichens , the white and yellow and purple cyprepedium , or lady 's slipper , called by the Indians ` moccasin flower , ' the purple and scarlet iris , the bright pink blossom of the columbine , and all the other wind-blown and world-forgotten flowerets of the forest . As the day grew warmer he betook himself for coolness to a quiet leaf-screened nook , beneath a rudely sculptured cliff , mantled in foliage . Here he reclined after his midday lunch , gazing out upon a sky so blue that it seemed a sea washing the invisible shores of heaven , and dreaming of as many things as usually occupy the fancy of a young man on an idle June day . But one event of which he did not dream was rapidly approaching . A wild bird more brilliant and beautiful than any he had so patiently waited for with his gun was preparing to fall at his feet . Just above his head the Algonquin maiden , Wanda , who like himself had strayed far from home , was reposing warm and wearied in utter unconsciousness of the proximity of any human being .