many square miles, contained large plantations, and
had names as well as numbers. Island Forty, reached about ten o'clock,
was also Beef Island. Number Thirty-eight, which they began to pass half
an hour later, was Brandywine Island. To pass Island Thirty-five on its
short side at full speed took half an hour, and Forked-Deer Island,
which kept the boat flying up a narrow chute from half-past two till
three o'clock, was old Twenty-seven and Twenty-six grown together.

Now, these things are geography rather than history. But for at least
two souls aboard the _Votaress_ they were more history than geography.
History--they were life! the outer frame of life so really lived that
for those two souls it would be history thenceforth to life's end. And
here comes in some pure philosophy from the two pilots: to wit, that if
you turn any old maxim over you will always find another truth on its
other side. They reached this conclusion, through Ned's remarking that
the course of true love never runs smooth.

"That," said Watson, "depends. It depends a lot on who they air that's
a-takin' the course. Ef they're the right ones, a real for-true pair,
sech as the wayfarin' man though a pilot kin see _air_ a pair, like----"

"Two gloves," said Ned.

"Yass, or galluses--I misdoubt ef there's anything in the world that'll
run so smooth through and over and around and under so much cussed
roughness as what true love will."

The remark was justified before their eyes. The two whom they
contemplated, outwardly so unlike, were in their essence so of a kind
that they belonged each to each as simply and patently as the first
human pair. They saw it so themselves. Society about them was strangely
primitive--a "clapboard civilization," the actor named it to his wife at
their pilot-house point of view--and the "for-true" pair in sight below
them took frank advantage of its conditions to appropriate and accept
each other as simply and completely as if these weird conditions--with
their Devil's Elbow, Race-ground, Island, Tea-table, and Back-oven--were
a veritable Eden as Eden was before the devil got in. Without a note of
courtship or coquetry love ran ever more and more smoothly, growing
hourly and receiving each accession as we have seen the Mississippi
receive Red River--merely by deepening its own flow--but, unlike the
Mississippi, gaining in transparency as it gained in depth and power.

Since leaving Memphis this love without courtship o