Page:Maud Howe - Atlanta in the South.djvu/165

 shadow. Bouton de Rose suggested that they should take a stroll together, and the half-dozen companions took their way down toward the levee. The streets were still full of people, although it was very late. They found the levee alive with men unloading a vast cotton-steamer lying at the dock. The whole place was lit up by electric light, and the strong rays showed the dusky workmen as they rolled the heavy cotton bales ashore. Two by two, the men came pushing the great crates before them over the gang-plank to the levee, and darting back again for a new burden. The river, quiet and remorseless in its strength, flowed past steadily and swiftly. Woe to the man who should lose his footing on that slippery plank and fall into the tawny waters! No possible rescue for him, nothing but a long swooning agony as he would be swept like a straw down the current, and finally a horrible death by drowning when his little strength should have spent itself in struggling with the mighty waters. The fancy struck Feuardent that the senseless branch whirled along in the swift current at the mercy of the Mississippi might as easily be himself if by chance he should lose his footing and fall just there where the current was strongest. If he should slip and fall, or if some one should push him from behind—