a little hurricane, or, as the river people call them,
cyclones, that menaced. Dire as was the confusion and imminent as was
the peril, Nelia felt a sense of relief from what would have been harder
to bear--an attack by men. She had searched the map for information, but
it was the river which inspired her to understand that the hurricane was
her deliverance rather than her assailant.

She did not know whether she would live or die during those seconds when
the gale crashed like maul blows and wind and rain poured and whistled
in at the broken window pane. She laughed at her predicament, tumbling
in dishevelment around the bouncing cabin floor, and when the suck and
send of the storm crater passed by, leaving a driving wind, she stepped
out on the bows, and caught up her sweeps to ride the waves and face the
gale that set steadily in from the north.

It was gray, impenetrable black--that night. She could see nothing,
neither the waves nor the sky nor the river banks; but singing aloud,
she steadied the boat, bow to the wind, holding it to the gale by
dipping the sweeps deep and strong.

Beaten steadily back, unable to know how far or in what direction, she
found her soul, serenely above the mere physical danger, loving that
vast torrent more than ever.

The Mississippi trains its own to be brave.

CHAPTER XXXI

Parson Rasba and Terabon floated out into the main river current and ran
with the stream. They were passing through the famous, changeable
channels among the great sandbars from Island No. 34 down to Hopefield
Bend. They rounded Dean Island Bend in the darkness, for they had
floated all day and far into the night, driven by an anxiety which was
inexplicable.

They wanted to be going; they felt an urge which they commented upon; it
was a voice in their hearts, and not audible in their ears. Yet when
they stood nervously at the great sweeps of the mission boat, to pull
the occasional strokes necessary to clear a bar or flank a bend, they
could almost declare that the river was talking.

They strained their ears in vain, trying to distinguish the meanings of
the distant murmurings. Terabon, now well familiar with the river, could
easily believe that he was listening to the River Spirit, and his
feelings were melancholy.

For months he had strained every power of his mind to record the exact
facts about the Mississippi, and he put down tens of thousands of words
describing and stating what he saw,