ebris
and particularly for the terrible snags which were such a danger in the
early Mississippi. Keen as were his eyes, he could see little ahead of him
but the black water, now beaten into a comparatively smooth plain by the
steady rain.

Shif'less Sol had taken off his cap and the rain drove steadily on the
back of his head; but his body, thanks to the thick blanket wrapped so
tightly around his neck, remained dry.

Shif'less Sol was not uncomfortable. Neither was he alarmed or unhappy.
There was a strain of chivalry and romance in his forest-bred soul, and
the situation appealed to him. He was in a strong boat, his four faithful
comrades were with him, and he was piercing a new mystery, that of a vast
and unknown river. The spirit that has always driven on the great
explorers and adventurers thrilled in every nerve of Solomon Hyde,
nicknamed the Shiftless One, but not at all deserving the title.

The boat went steadily on in the blackness and the rain, and Sol's soul
swelled jubilantly within him. He could see perhaps thirty or forty feet
ahead of him over the smooth plain of black water, and at an equal
distance to right and left the black wall rose, also. So far as feeling
went, the land might be a thousand miles away, and he was glad of it.

"Which sea are we ploughin' through now, Paul?" he said. "Is it the
Atlantic or the Pacific or one I ain't heard tell of a-tall, a-tall? But
which ever it is, I'm Christopher Columbus the second, on my way to
discover a new continent bigger than all the others put together! Jumpin'
Jehoshaphat! but that was a narrow escape! It made my flesh creep!"

Sol had shifted the boat in her course, just in time to escape an ominous
snag, but in a moment his joyousness came back, and without giving Paul
time to answer, he continued:

"A boat goin' down stream on a river is shorely the right way o' travelin'
fur a lazy man like me. I wish it wuz all like this!"

The violence of the rain abated somewhat in an hour or so, but it
continued to come down for a long time. Far after midnight the clouds
began to part. A damp patch of sky showed, but it was clear sky
nevertheless and soon it broadened.

The flooded world rose up before the five voyagers, the vast river, still
black in the night light, floating trees, perhaps rooted up by the stream
from shores thousands of miles to the north and west, the low dim outline
of forest to right and left, and all around them an immense desolatio