There was nobody on board. I
was hungry and thirsty--I looked for something to eat; there was nothing
but the ashes of a fire and a man's coat. I crept into the straw. Soon
a boat brought men, one for each barge, and there were sounds of steam.
As soon as we began moving through the water, I fell asleep. When I woke
we were creeping through a heavy mist. I made a little hole in the straw
and saw the bargeman. He was sitting by a fire at the barge's edge, so
that the sparks and smoke blew away over the water. He ate and drank with
both hands, and funny enough he looked in the mist, like a big bird
flapping its wings; there was a good smell of coffee, and I sneezed. How
the fellow started! But presently he took a pitchfork and prodded the
straw. Then I stood up. I couldn't help laughing, he was so
surprised--a huge, dark man, with a great black beard. I pointed to the
fire and said 'Give me some, brother!' He pulled me out of the straw; I
was so stiff, I couldn't move. I sat by the fire, and ate black bread
and turnips, and drank coffee; while he stood by, watching me and
muttering. I couldn't understand him well--he spoke a dialect from
Hungary. He asked me: How I got there--who I was--where I was from? I
looked up in his face, and he looked down at me, sucking his pipe. He
was a big man, he lived alone on the river, and I was tired of telling
lies, so I told him the whole thing. When I had done he just grunted. I
can see him now standing over me, with the mist hanging in his beard, and
his great naked arms. He drew me some water, and I washed and showed him
my wig and moustache, and threw them overboard. All that day we lay out
on the barge in the mist, with our feet to the fire, smoking; now and
then he would spit into the ashes and mutter into his beard. I shall
never forget that day. The steamer was like a monster with fiery
nostrils, and the other barges were dumb creatures with eyes, where the
fires were; we couldn't see the bank, but now and then a bluff and high
trees, or a castle, showed in the mist. If I had only had paint and
canvas that day!" He sighed.

"It was early Spring, and the river was in flood; they were going to
Regensburg to unload there, take fresh cargo, and back to Linz. As soon
as the mist began to clear, the bargeman hid me in the straw. At Passau
was the frontier; they lay there for the night, but nothing happened, and
I slept in the straw. The next day I lay out on