d in their immediate present.
It seemed as though they found their comprehension expanding and
widening till it encompassed the answers to a thousand questions. Rasba,
dazed by his own accretion of new interests, discovery of undreamed-of
powers, seizure of opportunities never known before, could but gaze with
awe and thankfulness at the evidences of his great good fortune, the
blessings that were his in spite of his wondering why one of so little
desert had received such bountiful favour. Terabon, remembering what he
feared was irrevocably lost, knew that he had escaped disaster, and that
the pile of notes which he had made only to be deprived of them were
after all of less importance than that he should have suffered the deep
emotion of seeing so much of his toil and time vanish.

Here it was again--Rasba might well wonder at that gathering and
hoarding of trifles. They were not the important things, those minute
words and facts and points; no, indeed.

At last Terabon knew that most important fact of all that it was the
emotions that counted. As a mere spectator, he could never hope to know
the Mississippi, to describe and write it truly; the river had forced
him into the activities of the river life, and had done him by that act
its finest service.

He was in the fervour of his most recent discovery when Rasba went out
on the bow deck and looked into the night. He called Terabon a minute
later, and the two looked at a phenomenon. The west was aglow, like a
sunset, but with flarings and flashings instead of slowly changing
lights and hues. The light under the clouds at the horizon extended
through 90 degrees of the compass, and in the centre of the bright
greenish flare there was a compact, black, apparently solid mass from
which streaks of lightning constantly exuded on all sides.

For a minute Terabon stared, cold chills goose-pimpling his flesh. Then
he cried:

"Cyclone, Parson! Get ready!"

They were opposite the head of a long bend near the end of a big
sandbar, and skirting the edge of an eddy, near its foot. Terabon sprang
into the gasolene launch, started the motor, and steered for the shelter
of the west bank. In the quiet he and Rasba told each other what to do.

Rasba ran out two big anchors with big mooring lines tied to them. He
closed the bow door but opened all the windows and other doors. Then, as
they heard the storm coming, they covered the launch with the heavy
canvas, heaved over the ancho