rs into a fathom of water, let out long
lines, and played the launch out over the stern on a heavy line fast to
towing bits.

A sweep of hail and rain was followed by a moment of calm. Then a blast
of wind, which scraped over the cabin roof, was succeeded by the suck of
the tornado, which swept, a waterspout, across the river a quarter of a
mile down stream, struck a sandbar, and carried up a golden yellow cloud
of dust, which disappeared in the gray blackness of a terrific downpour
of rain.

They stretched out on their anchor lines till the whole fabric of the
cabin hummed and crackled with the strain, but the lines held, and the
windows being open, prevented the semi-vacuum created by the storm's
passing from "exploding" the boat, and tearing off the cabin, or the
roof.

After the varying gusts and blasts the wind settled down, colder by
forty degrees, and with the steady white of a norther. It meant days and
nights of waiting while the storm blew itself out. And when the danger
had passed and the boats were safe against the lines, the two men turned
in to sleep, more tired after their adventures than they remembered ever
being before.

In the morning rain was falling intermittently with some sleet, but
toward afternoon there was just a cold wind. They built hot fires in
their heater, burning coal with which the gamblers had filled bow and
stern bins from coal barges somewhere up the river. Having plenty to eat
on board, there was nothing to worry them.

Terabon, his fountain pen racing, wrote for his own distant Sunday
Editor a narrative which excited the compiler of the Magazine Supplement
to deep oaths of admiration for the fertile, prolific imagination of
the wandering writer--for who would believe in a romance ready made?

The night of the big wind was followed by a day and a night of gusts of
wind and sleety rain; then followed a day and a night of rising clouds,
then a day when the clouds were scattered and the sun was cold. That day
the sunset was grim, white, and freezing cold.

In the morning there was a bright, warm sunrise, a breath of sweet, soft
air, and unimaginable brightness and buoyancy, birds singing, squirrels
barking, and all the dismal pangs banished.

Shanty-boats shot out into the gay river and dotted the wide surface up
and down the current for miles. The ears of the parson and the writer,
keener with the acuteness of distant sounds, could hear music from a
boat so far away that they