Algernon Blackwood Read Free Page A

plunge, and dived out of sight in a flash.
    "An otter, by gad!" we exclaimed in the same breath, laughing.
    It was an otter, alive, and out on the hunt; yet it had looked exactly like
the body of a drowned man turning helplessly in the current. Far below it
came to the surface once again, and we saw its black skin, wet and shining
in the sunlight.
    Then, too, just as we turned back, our arms full of driftwood, another
thing happened to recall us to the river bank. This time it really was a
man, and what was more, a man in a boat. Now a small boat on the Danube was
an unusual sight at any time, but here in this deserted region, and at
flood time, it was so unexpected as to constitute a real event. We stood
and stared.
    Whether it was due to the slanting sunlight, or the refraction from the
wonderfully illumined water, I cannot say, but, whatever the cause, I found
it difficult to focus my sight properly upon the flying apparition. It
seemed, however, to be a man standing upright in a sort of flat-bottomed
boat, steering with a long oar, and being carried down the opposite shore
at a tremendous pace. He apparently was looking across in our direction,
but the distance was too great and the light too uncertain for us to make
out very plainly what he was about. It seemed to me that he was
gesticulating and making signs at us. His voice came across the water to us
shouting something furiously, but the wind drowned it so that no single
word was audible. There was something curious about the whole
appearance—man, boat, signs, voice—that made an impression on me out of
all proportion to its cause.
    "He's crossing himself!" I cried. "Look, he's making the sign of the
Cross!"
    "I believe you're right," the Swede said, shading his eyes with his hand
and watching the man out of sight. He seemed to be gone in a moment,
melting away down there into the sea of willows where the sun caught them
in the bend of the river and turned them into a great crimson wall of
beauty. Mist, too, had begun to ruse, so that the air was hazy.
    "But what in the world is he doing at nightfall on this flooded river?" I
said, half to myself. "Where is he going at such a time, and what did he
mean by his signs and shouting? D'you think he wished to warn us about
something?"
    "He saw our smoke, and thought we were spirits probably," laughed my
companion. "These Hungarians believe in all sorts of rubbish; you remember
the shopwoman at Pressburg warning us that no one ever landed here because
it belonged to some sort of beings outside man's world! I suppose they
believe in fairies and elementals, possibly demons, too. That peasant in
the boat saw people on the islands for the first time in his life," he
added, after a slight pause, "and it scared him, that's all."
    The Swede's tone of voice was not convincing, and his manner lacked
something that was usually there. I noted the change instantly while he
talked, though without being able to label it precisely.
    "If they had enough imagination," I laughed loudly—I remember trying to
make as much noise as I could—"they might well people a place like this
with the old gods of antiquity. The Romans must have haunted all this
region more or less with their shrines and sacred groves and elemental
deities."
    The subject dropped and we returned to our stew-pot, for my friend was not
given to imaginative conversation as a rule. Moreover, just then I remember
feeling distinctly glad that he was not imaginative; his stolid, practical
nature suddenly seemed to me welcome and comforting. It was an admirable
temperament, I felt; he could steer down rapids like a red Indian, shoot
dangerous bridges and whirlpools better than any white man I ever saw in a
canoe. He was a grand fellow for an adventurous trip, a tower of strength
when untoward things happened. I looked at his strong face and light curly
hair as he staggered along under his pile of driftwood (twice the size of
mine!), and I experienced a feeling of relief. Yes, I