e _is_ something new under the
sun!

Lester Terabon strolled forth with easy nonchalance, and three days
later he was in the office of the secretary of the Mississippi River
Commission, at St. Louis, calmly inquiring into the duties and
performance thereof, involving the efforts of 100,000 Negroes, 40,000
mules, 500 contractors, 10,000 government officials, a few hundred
pieces of floating plant, and sundry other things which Terabon had
conceived were of importance.

He had approached the Mississippi River from the human angle. He knew of
no other way of approach. His first view of the river, as he crossed the
Merchants Bridge, had not disturbed his equilibrium in the least, and he
had floated out of an eddy in a 16-foot skiff still with the
human-viewpoint approach.

Then had begun a combat in his mind between all his preconceived ideas
and information and the river realities. Faithfully, in the notebooks
which he carried, he put down the details of his mental disturbances.

By the time he reached Island No. 10 sandbar he had about resigned
himself to the whimsicalities of river living. He had, however,
preserved his attitude of aloofness and extraneousness. He regarded
himself as a visiting observer who would record the events in which
others had a part. It still pleased his fancy to say that he was
interviewing the Mississippi River as he might interview the President
of the United States.

But as Lester Terabon rowed his skiff back up the eddy above New Madrid,
and breasted the current in the sweep of the reach to that little
cabin-boat half a mile above the Island No. 10 light, his attitude was
undergoing a conscious change. While he had been reporting the
Mississippi River in its varying moods something had encircled him and
grasped him, and was holding him.

For some time he had felt the change in his position; glimmerings of its
importance had appeared in his notes; his mind had fought against it as
a corruption, lest it ruin the career which he had mapped out for
himself.

When the New Madrid fish-dock man told him to carry the warning that a
"detector" was hunting for a certain woman, and that the detective had
gone on down with some river fellows, his place as a river man was
assured. River folks trusted and used him as they used themselves.
Moreover, he was possessed of a vital river secret.

Nelia Crele, _alias_ Nelia Carline, was the woman, and they were both
stopping over at the Island No. 10