olute content. He
picked some oranges, and ate them in meditative enjoyment. For a while
he nodded, half asleep, beside his fire, watching the darkened river,
where the mullet, shimmering with phosphorescence, still leaped
starkly above the surface, and fell in spattering brilliance. Midnight
found him sprawled asleep beside his fire.

Once he awoke. The moon had risen, and a little breeze waved the
hanging moss, and whispered in the glossy foliage of orange and
palmetto with a sound like falling rain. Gideon sat up and peered
about him, rolling his eyes hither and thither at the menacing leap
and dance of the jet shadows. His heart was beating thickly, his
muscles twitched, and the awful terrors of night pulsed and shuddered
over him. Nameless specters peered at him from every shadow,
ingenerate familiars of his wild, forgotten blood. He groaned aloud in
a delicious terror; and presently, still twitching and shivering, fell
asleep again. It was as if something magical had happened; his fear
remembered the fear of centuries, and yet with the warm daylight was
absolutely forgotten.

He got up a little after sunrise, and went down to the river to bathe,
diving deep with a joyful sense of freeing himself from the last alien
dust of travel. Once ashore again, however, he began to prepare his
breakfast with some haste. For the first time in his journey he was
feeling a sense of loneliness and a longing for his kind. He was still
happy, but his laughter began to seem strange to him in the solitude.
He tried the defiant experiment of laughing for the effect of it, an
experiment which brought him to his feet in startled terror; for his
laughter was echoed. As he stood peering about him, the sound came
again, not laughter this time, but a suppressed giggle. It was human
beyond a doubt. Gideon's face shone with relief and sympathetic
amusement; he listened for a moment, and then strode surely forward
toward a clump of low palms. There he paused, every sense alert. His
ear caught a soft rustle, a little gasp of fear; the sound of a foot
moved cautiously.

"Missy," he said tentatively, "I reckon yo'-all's come jes 'bout 'n
time foh breakfus. Yo' betteh have some. Ef yo' ain' too white to sit
down with a black man."

The leaves parted, and a smiling face as black as Gideon's own
regarded him in shy amusement.

"Who is yo', man?"

"I mought be king of Kongo," he laughed, "but I ain't. Yo' see befo'
yo' jes Gideon--at yo'r 's