At night we heard it singing to the moon as we lay in our
tent, uttering that odd sibilant note peculiar to itself and said to be
caused by the rapid tearing of the pebbles along its bed, so great is
its hurrying speed. We knew, too, the voice of its gurgling whirlpools,
suddenly bubbling up on a surface previously quite calm; the roar of
its shallows and swift rapids; its constant steady thundering below all
mere surface sounds; and that ceaseless tearing of its icy waters at
the banks. How it stood up and shouted when the rains fell flat upon
its face! And how its laughter roared out when the wind blew up-stream
and tried to stop its growing speed! We knew all its sounds and voices,
its tumblings and foamings, its unnecessary splashing against the
bridges; that self-conscious chatter when there were hills to look on;
the affected dignity of its speech when it passed through the little
towns, far too important to laugh; and all these faint, sweet
whisperings when the sun caught it fairly in some slow curve and poured
down upon it till the steam rose. It was full of tricks, too, in its early life before the great world
knew it. There were places in the upper reaches among the Swabian
forests, when yet the first whispers of its destiny had not reached it,
where it elected to disappear through holes in the ground, to appear
again on the other side of the porous limestone hills and start a new
river with another name; leaving, too, so little water in its own bed
that we had to climb out and wade and push the canoe through miles of
shallows. And a chief pleasure, in those early days of its irresponsible youth,
was to lie low, like Brer Fox, just before the little turbulent
tributaries came to join it from the Alps, and to refuse to acknowledge
them when in, but to run for miles side by side, the dividing line well
marked, the very levels different, the Danube utterly declining to
recognize the newcomer. Below Passau, however, it gave up this
particular trick, for there the Inn comes in with a thundering power
impossible to ignore, and so pushes and incommodes the parent river
that there is hardly room for them in the long twisting gorge that
follows, and the Danube is shoved this way and that against the cliffs,
and forced to hurry itself with great waves and much dashing to and fro
in order to get through in time. And during the fight our canoe slipped
down from its shoulder to its breast, and had the time of its life
among the struggling waves. But the Inn taught the old river a lesson,
and after Passau it no longer pretended to ignore new arrivals. This was many days back, of course, and since then we had come to know
other aspects of the great creature, and across the Bavarian wheat
plain of Straubing she wandered so slowly under the blazing June sun
that we could well imagine only the surface inches were water, while
below there moved, concealed as by a silken mantle, a whole army of
Undines, passing silently and unseen down to the sea, and very
leisurely too, lest they be discovered. Much, too, we forgave her because of her friendliness to the birds and
animals that haunted the shores. Cormorants lined the banks in lonely
places in rows like short black palings; grey crows crowded the
shingle-beds; storks stood fishing in the vistas of shallower water
that opened up between the islands, and hawks, swans, and marsh birds
of all sorts filled the air with glinting wings and singing, petulant
cries. It was impossible to feel annoyed with the river’s vagaries
after seeing a deer leap with a splash into the water at sunrise and
swim past the bows of the canoe; and often we saw fawns peering at us
from the underbrush, or looked straight into the brown eyes of a stag
as we charged full tilt round a corner and entered another reach of the
river. Foxes, too, everywhere haunted the banks, tripping daintily
among the driftwood and disappearing so suddenly that it was impossible
to see how they managed it. But now, after leaving Pressburg, everything changed a little, and the
Danube became more serious. It ceased trifling. It was half-way to the
Black Sea, within seeming distance almost of other, stranger countries
where no tricks would be permitted or understood. It became suddenly
grown-up, and claimed our respect and even our awe. It broke out into
three arms, for one thing, that only met again a hundred kilometers
farther down, and for a canoe there were no indications which one was
intended to be followed. “If you take a side channel,” said the Hungarian officer we met in the
Pressburg shop while buying provisions, “you may find yourselves, when
the flood subsides, forty miles from anywhere, high and dry, and you
may easily starve. There are no people, no farms, no fishermen. I warn
you not to continue. The river, too, is still rising, and this wind
will increase.”

The rising river did not alarm us in the least, but the matter of being
left high and dry by a sudden subsidence of the waters might be
serious, and we had consequently laid in an extra stock of provisions. For the rest, the officer’s prophecy held true, and the wind, blowing
down a perfectly clear sky, increased steadily till it reached the
dignity of a westerly gale. It was earlier than usual when we camped, for the sun was a good hour
or two from the horizon, and leaving my friend still asleep on the hot
sand, I wandered about in desultory examination of our hotel. The
island, I found, was less than an acre in extent, a mere sandy bank
standing some two or three feet above the level of the river. The far
end, pointing into the sunset, was covered with flying spray which the
tremendous wind drove off the crests of the broken waves. It was
triangular in shape, with the apex up stream. I stood there for several minutes, watching the impetuous crimson flood
bearing down with a shouting roar, dashing in waves against the bank as
though to sweep it bodily away, and then swirling by in two foaming
streams on either side. The ground seemed to shake with the shock and
rush, while the furious movement of the willow bushes as the wind
poured over them increased the curious illusion that the island itself
actually moved. Above, for a mile or two, I could see the great river
descending upon me; it was like looking up the slope of a sliding hill,
white with foam, and leaping up everywhere to show itself to the sun. The rest of the island was too thickly grown with willows to make
walking pleasant, but I made the tour, nevertheless. From the lower end
the light, of course, changed, and the river looked dark and angry. Only the backs of the flying waves were visible, streaked with foam,
and pushed forcibly by the great puffs of wind that fell upon them from
behind. For a short mile it was visible, pouring in and out among the
islands, and then disappearing with a huge sweep into the willows,
which closed about it like a herd of monstrous antediluvian creatures
crowding down to drink.