Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/356

Rh eggs, melons and peaches—the staple of our food for the next fortnight.

While the dinner simmered we had a trial of strength with the Delaware itself, breast to breast. Swiftly we struck across and down the river for a hundred yards, and then turned and faced the stream. Three strong swimmers,—two of the three extraordinary. Moseley, with the over-hand stroke, which sends him about eight feet a stroke in still water, made progress at the rate of about the foot a stroke. Guiteras barely held his own, swimming as if he were anchored; and, watching the bank, I saw that I was actually going down stream. Under such circumstances you can do a great deal of swimming in a quarter of an hour.

The sun went down on the left, above the low trees, without cloud or haze. For a long time after its disappearance the upward rays flamed on the face of the great cliff across the river, the red gleam moving higher and higher, and the darkness creeping up the wooded wall like a vast tide. When the line of light had cleared the brow of the cliff the trees above, diminished to a finger-length, blazed in gold and crimson; and then, almost suddenly, the light left them,—rose over them, and was lost in space, and they, too, were swallowed up in the night.

"The light that shoots over the heads of trees