They made me think of gigantic sponge-like
growths that sucked the river up into themselves. They caused it to
vanish from sight. They herded there together in such overpowering
numbers. Altogether it was an impressive scene, with its utter loneliness, its
bizarre suggestion; and as I gazed, long and curiously, a singular
emotion began to stir somewhere in the depths of me. Midway in my
delight of the wild beauty, there crept, unbidden and unexplained, a
curious feeling of disquietude, almost of alarm. A rising river, perhaps, always suggests something of the ominous; many
of the little islands I saw before me would probably have been swept
away by the morning; this resistless, thundering flood of water touched
the sense of awe. Yet I was aware that my uneasiness lay deeper far
than the emotions of awe and wonder. It was not that I felt. Nor had it
directly to do with the power of the driving wind—this shouting
hurricane that might almost carry up a few acres of willows into the
air and scatter them like so much chaff over the landscape. The wind
was simply enjoying itself, for nothing rose out of the flat landscape
to stop it, and I was conscious of sharing its great game with a kind
of pleasurable excitement. Yet this novel emotion had nothing to do
with the wind. Indeed, so vague was the sense of distress I
experienced, that it was impossible to trace it to its source and deal
with it accordingly, though I was aware somehow that it had to do with
my realization of our utter insignificance before this unrestrained
power of the elements about me. The huge-grown river had something to
do with it too—a vague, unpleasant idea that we had somehow trifled
with these great elemental forces in whose power we lay helpless every
hour of the day and night. For here, indeed, they were gigantically at
play together, and the sight appealed to the imagination. But my emotion, so far as I could understand it, seemed to attach
itself more particularly to the willow bushes, to these acres and acres
of willows, crowding, so thickly growing there, swarming everywhere the
eye could reach, pressing upon the river as though to suffocate it,
standing in dense array mile after mile beneath the sky, watching,
waiting, listening. And, apart quite from the elements, the willows
connected themselves subtly with my malaise, attacking the mind
insidiously somehow by reason of their vast numbers, and contriving in
some way or other to represent to the imagination a new and mighty
power, a power, moreover, not altogether friendly to us. Great revelations of nature, of course, never fail to impress in one
way or another, and I was no stranger to moods of the kind. Mountains
overawe and oceans terrify, while the mystery of great forests
exercises a spell peculiarly its own. But all these, at one point or
another, somewhere link on intimately with human life and human
experience. They stir comprehensible, even if alarming, emotions. They
tend on the whole to exalt. With this multitude of willows, however, it was something far
different, I felt. Some essence emanated from them that besieged the
heart. A sense of awe awakened, true, but of awe touched somewhere by a
vague terror. Their serried ranks, growing everywhere darker about me
as the shadows deepened, moving furiously yet softly in the wind, woke
in me the curious and unwelcome suggestion that we had trespassed here
upon the borders of an alien world, a world where we were intruders, a
world where we were not wanted or invited to remain—where we ran grave
risks perhaps! The feeling, however, though it refused to yield its meaning entirely
to analysis, did not at the time trouble me by passing into menace. Yet
it never left me quite, even during the very practical business of
putting up the tent in a hurricane of wind and building a fire for the
stew-pot. It remained, just enough to bother and perplex, and to rob a
most delightful camping-ground of a good portion of its charm. To my
companion, however, I said nothing, for he was a man I considered
devoid of imagination. In the first place, I could never have explained
to him what I meant, and in the second, he would have laughed stupidly
at me if I had. There was a slight depression in the center of the island, and here we
pitched the tent. The surrounding willows broke the wind a bit. “A poor camp,” observed the imperturbable Swede when at last the tent
stood upright, “no stones and precious little firewood. I’m for moving
on early tomorrow—eh? This sand won’t hold anything.”

But the experience of a collapsing tent at midnight had taught us many
devices, and we made the cozy gipsy house as safe as possible, and then
set about collecting a store of wood to last till bed-time. Willow
bushes drop no branches, and driftwood was our only source of supply. We hunted the shores pretty thoroughly. Everywhere the banks were
crumbling as the rising flood tore at them and carried away great
portions with a splash and a gurgle. “The island’s much smaller than when we landed,” said the accurate
Swede. “It won’t last long at this rate. We’d better drag the canoe
close to the tent, and be ready to start at a moment’s notice. I shall
sleep in my clothes.”

He was a little distance off, climbing along the bank, and I heard his
rather jolly laugh as he spoke. “By Jove!” I heard him call, a moment later, and turned to see what had
caused his exclamation. But for the moment he was hidden by the
willows, and I could not find him. “What in the world’s this?” I heard him cry again, and this time his
voice had become serious. I ran up quickly and joined him on the bank. He was looking over the
river, pointing at something in the water. “Good heavens, it’s a man’s body!” he cried excitedly. “Look!”

A black thing, turning over and over in the foaming waves, swept
rapidly past. It kept disappearing and coming up to the surface again. It was about twenty feet from the shore, and just as it was opposite to
where we stood it lurched round and looked straight at us. We saw its
eyes reflecting the sunset, and gleaming an odd yellow as the body
turned over. Then it gave a swift, gulping 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.