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Indranath

N a few moments the darkness had closed in upon us. All that could be discerned were the swollen waters, immense and dim, flowing in parallel lines on the right and left, and, buoyed up between, the swift little canoe and the two boys in it. Everything else was blotted out. I had not then reached the age at which I could realise the solemn immensity of this aspect of Nature, but I have not forgotten to this day what I saw on that night. It was the vast incarnate form of midnight gloom that shaped itself before my eyes, still and silent without the stir of a breath, lonely and companionless as death itself. Dark masses of her hair covered the earth and the heavens, and through the intense gloom, flashing from the limitless currents which shot out like enormous, glistening rows of teeth, appeared a dim phosphorescence, sinister and malevolent, like a hard, mocking smile half-suppressed. Here a rushing current would suddenly strike against the bed of the river and, rising, burst into foam; there, cross-currents would meet, and dashing together create a whirlpool, and all about us were mad, unimpeded masses of water sweeping furiously by.

I could just feel that our canoe was crossing the river diagonally. But it was beyond my power to observe to what landmark or spot on the opposite bank Indra was steering it through the inky darkness. I did not know then what an experienced steersman he was. Suddenly he said to me, 'Well, Srikanta, are you afraid?'

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