the
Grecians used to believe, that goddesses and gods do come down to the
earth to mingle among mankind. He fought the impossibility with his
reason, and night winds laughed at him, while the voices of the waves
chuckled at his predicament. They assailed him with their presence like
living things, and then roared away to give room to new voices and new
presences.

"Anyhow," Terabon laughed, in spite of himself, "you're good company,
Old Mississip'!"

Yet he felt the chilling and depressing possibility that he might never
again see that woman who would remain as a "river goddess" in his
imagination. He had been heart-free, a bystander in the world's affairs.
Now he knew what it was to see the memory of a woman rise unbidden to
disturb his calculations; more than that, too, he was a part of the
affairs of the River People.

As a reporter "back home" he had never been able quite to reconcile
himself to his constant position as a spectator, a neutral observer,
obliged to write news without feeling and impartially. A politician
could look him in the eye and tell him any smooth lie, and he could not,
with white heat, deny the statement. He could not rise with his own
strength to champion the cause of what he knew to be right against
wrong; he could not elaborate on the details of things that he felt most
interested in, but must consult the fancies of a not-particularly
discriminating public, whose average intelligence, according to some
learned students, must be placed at seventeen-years plus. As he was
twenty-four plus, Terabon was immensely discouraged with the public when
he had set forth down the Mississippi.

Now he was on the way from a river goddess to interfere with the
infamous plans of river pirates, through a dry gale out of the north, on
the winding course of the Mississippi, a transition which troubled the
self-possession while it awakened the spirit of the young man.

Dawn broke on the troubled river, and the prospect was enchanting to the
heroic in the mind of the skiff-tripper. He could not be sure which was
east or west, for the gray light appeared on all sides, in spots and
patches of varying size. No gleam reflected from the yellow clay of the
tumbling and tortured waters. As far as he could see there was light,
but not a bright light. Dull purples, muddy waters, gray tree trunks,
black limbs against dark clouds; Terabon felt the weariness of a desert,
the melancholy of a wet, dripping-tree wildernes