The Mississippi River brings people from the most distant places to
close proximity; Pittsburg and even Salamanca meet Fort Benton and St.
Paul at the Forks of the Ohio. On the other hand, with uncanny
certainty, those most eager to meet are kept apart and thrown to the
ends of the world.
Parson Rasba saw Nelia Crele's boat drift out into the current and drop
down the Chute of Wolf Island, and impelled by solitude and imagination
he followed her. She had awakened sensations in his heart which he had
never before known, so he acted with primitive directness and moved out
into the Mississippi.
The river carried him swiftly toward a town whose electric lights
sparkled on a high bluff, Hickman, and he saw the cabin-boat of the
young and venturesome woman clearly outlined between him and the town.
For nearly an hour he was conscious of the assistance of the river in
carrying him along at an even pace, permitting him to remain as guardian
of the woman. He felt that she needed him, that he must help her, and
there grew in his heart an emotion which strangely made him desire to
sing and to shout.
He watched the cabin-boat drift down right into the pathway of
reflections that fell from the lights on Hickman bluffs. His eyes were
apparently fixed upon the boat, and he could not lose sight of it. The
river carried him right into the same glare, and for a few minutes he
looked up at the arcs, and shaded his eyes to get some view of the town
whose sounds consisted of the mournful howling of a dog.
Rasba looked back at the town, and felt the awe which a sleeping
village inspires in the thoughts of a passer-by. He thought perhaps he
would never again see that town. He wondered if there was a lost soul
there whose slumberings he could disturb and bring it to salvation. He
looked down the river, and the next instant his boat was seized as by a
strong hand and whirled around and around, and flung far from its
course. He remembered the phenomenon at the Forks of the Ohio, and again
at Columbus bluff's. With difficulty he found his bearings.
He looked around and saw to his surprise that he was drifting up stream.
He looked about him in amazement. He searched the blackness of the
river, and stared at the blinding lights of the town. He began to row
with his sweeps, and look down stream whither had disappeared the
cabin-boat whose occupant he had felt called upon to guard and protect.
That boat was gone. In the few minutes it had disappeared from his view.
He surmised, at last, that he had been thrust into an eddy, for the
current was carrying him up stream, and he rowed against it in vain.
Only when he had floated hundreds of yards in the leisurely reverse
current below the great bar of Island No. 6 and had drifted out into the
main current again, almost under the Hickman lights once more, was he
able in his ignorance to escape from the time-trap into which he had
fallen.
Standing at his oars, and rowing down stream, he tried to overtake the
young woman whose good looks, bright eyes, sympathetic understanding,
and need of his spiritual tutoring had caught his mind and made it
captive.
Dawn, following false dawn, saw him passing New Madrid, still rowing
impatiently, his eyes staring down the wild current, past a graveyard
poised ready to plunge on the left bank, and then down the baffling
crossing at Point Pleasant and through the sunny breadths up to
Tiptonville, half sunk in the river, only to fall away toward Little
Cypress--and still no sight of the lost cabin-boat.
In mid-afternoon, weary and worn by sleeplessness and expectancy, he
pulled his boat into the deadwater at the foot of an eddy and having
thrown over his stone anchor, sadly entered his cabin and, without
prayer, subsided into sleep.
If he dreamed he was not awakened to consciousness by his visions. He
slept on in the deep weariness which followed the wakefulness that had
continued through a night of undiminished anxiety into a day of doubt
and increasing despair. It had not occurred to him, in his simplicity,
that the young woman would escape from him. The shadow and the gloom
next to the bank on either side had not suggested his passing by the
object of his intention. His thought was that she must have gone right
on down stream, though he might have divined from his own condition that
she, too, long since must have been weary.
He awakened some time in the morning, after twelve hours or so of
uninterrupted slumber. He turned out into the fascinating darkness of
early morning on the Mississippi. A gust of chill wind swept down out of
the sky, rippling the surface and roaring through the woods up the bank.
The gust was followed by a raw calm and further blanketing of the few
stars that penetrated the veil of mist.
He had in mind the further pursuit of Nelia, and hauling in his anchor
he pulled out into mid-current and then by lamp-light prepared his
breakfast. While he worked, he discovered that dawn was near, and at
lengthening intervals he went out to look ahead, hoping to see the
object of his pursuit. Perhaps he would have gone on down to New
Orleans, only it is not written in Mississippi weather prophecies that
the tenor of one's way shall be even.
He heard wind blowing, and felt his boat bobbing about inexplicably. He
went out to look about him, and in the morning twilight he discovered
that the whole aspect of the Mississippi had changed. With the invisible
sunrise had come an awe-inspiring spectacle which excited in his mind
forebodings and dismay.
First, there was the cold wind which penetrated his clothes and
shrivelled the very meat of his bones. The river's surface, which he had
come to regard as a shimmering, polished floor, was now rumpled and
broken 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 believing that it was his duty to take care of
Nelia Crele, the fair woman of the river. He had believed only too
readily that his duty lay where his heart's desire had been most eager.
He sat there in dumb horror at the sin which had blinded him.
"I come down yeah to find Jock Drones for his mother!" He reminded
himself by speaking his mission aloud, adding, "And hyar I've be'n
floating down looking for a woman, looking for a pretty woman!"
And because he could remember her shoes, the smooth leather over those
exquisite ankles, Parson Rasba knew that his sin was mortal, and that no
other son of man had ever strayed so far as he.
No wonder he was caught in a desert blizzard where no one had ever said
there was a desert!
"Lord God," he cried out, "he'p this yeah po'r sinner! He'p! He'p!"