oken into lumpy waves, like mud on a road, and the waves broke into
dull yellow foam caps. There was not a light gleam on the whole surface,
and dark shadows seemed to crawl and twist about in the very substance
of the heavy and turgid waters.

Rasba stared. Born and trained in mountains, where he remembered clear
streams of pale, beautiful green, catching reflections of white clouds
and clean foliage, with only occasional patches of sullen clay-bank
wash, he refused to acknowledge the great tawny Mississippi at its best,
as a relation of the streams he knew. Certainly this menacing dawn
reminded him of nothing he had ever witnessed. Waves slapped against his
boat, waves which did not conceal, but rather accentuated, the sullen
and relentless rush of the vast body of the water. While the surface
leaped and struggled, wind-racked, the deeps moved steadily on. Elijah
saw that his boat was being driven into a river chute, and seizing his
sweeps, he began to row toward a sandbar which promised shoal water and
a landing.

He managed to strike the foot of the bar, and threw out his anchor rock.
He let go enough line to let the boat swing, and went in to breakfast.
While he was eating, he noticed that the table turned gray and that a
yellowish tinge settled upon everything. When he went out to look
around, he found that the air was full of a cloud that filled his eyes
with dust, and that a little drift of sand had already formed on the
deck of his boat, gritting under his feet. The cloud was so thick that
he could hardly see the river shores; a gale was blowing, and a whole
sandbar, miles long, was coming down upon him from the air. The sandbar,
when he looked at it, seemed fairly to be running, like water.

Parson Rasba remembered the storms of biblical times, and better
understood the wrath that was visited upon the Children of Israel.

He dwelt in that storm all that day. He shut the door to keep the sand
out, but it spurted through the cracks. He could see the puffing gusts
as they burst through the keyhole, and he could hear the heavier grains
rattling upon the thin, painted boards of his roof. His clothes grayed,
his hands gritted, his teeth crunched fine stone; he pondered upon the
question of what sin he had committed to bring on him this ancient
punishment.

For a long time his finite mind was without inspiration, without
understanding, and then he choked with terror and regret. He had
beguiled himself into belie