Page:Raymond Spears--Diamond Tolls.djvu/104

 would arrive in New Orleans too soon? He felt as though he had travelled so far down the lower river that he must be halfway to New Orleans, but when toward night his skiff swirled around a short, sharp bend, with a caving bank on the west and miles and miles of sandbars on the east, he saw ahead of him a bluff that loomed against the sky like a mountain. It rose, apparently, for hundreds of feet—a long ridge extended for miles back from the sheer, caving bluff.

Down the left turn of the bend was all caving bank, but opposite were sandbars and still waters. Looking that way, Murdong fell upon his oars and rowed across the current, and in the last light of day he anchored in the eddy. He put up his canvas, started his oil stoves, and cooked his dinner, the stoves giving the low shelter a comfortable and pleasing warmth for there had fallen a chill with the dark.

He read some more this night, but nothing he read compared with the fullness of the days. He was dazzled by the wonders of the lower river—the massy current, the ethereal sandbars and low, flimsy banks, the grim sky, and the absence of all the things to which he was used! He had seen but few people, had spoken to only eight or ten in weeks. He had dodged people on the upper river, and now there seemed to be hardly any people to dodge!

So he read till he could not hold his eyes