Famous Modern Ghost Stories | Page 6

well into Hungary, and the
muddy waters--sure sign of flood--sent us aground on many a shingle-bed, and twisted us
like a cork in many a sudden belching whirlpool before the towers of Pressburg
(Hungarian, Poszóny) showed against the sky; and then the canoe, leaping like a spirited
horse, flew at top speed under the gray walls, negotiated safely the sunken chain of the
Fliegende Brücke ferry, turned the corner sharply to the left, and plunged on yellow foam
into the wilderness of islands, sand-banks, and swamp-land beyond--the land of the
willows.
The change came suddenly, as when a series of bioscope pictures snaps down on the
streets of a town and shifts without warning into the scenery of lake and forest. We
entered the land of desolation on wings, and in less than half an hour there was neither
boat nor fishing-hut nor red roof, nor any single sign of human habitation and civilization
within sight. The sense of remoteness from the world of human kind, the utter isolation,
the fascination of this singular world of willows, winds, and waters, instantly laid its spell
upon us both, so that we allowed laughingly to one another that we ought by rights to
have held some special kind of passport to admit us, and that we had, somewhat
audaciously, come without asking leave into a separate little kingdom of wonder and
magic--a kingdom that was reserved for the use of others who had a right to it, with
everywhere unwritten warnings to trespassers for those who had the imagination to
discover them.
Though still early in the afternoon, the ceaseless buffetings of a most tempestuous wind
made us feel weary, and we at once began casting about for a suitable camping-ground
for the night. But the bewildering character of the islands made landing difficult; the
swirling flood carried us in-shore and then swept us out again; the willow branches tore
our hands as we seized them to stop the canoe, and we pulled many a yard of sandy bank
into the water before at length we shot with a great sideways blow from the wind into a
backwater and managed to beach the bows in a cloud of spray. Then we lay panting and

laughing after our exertions on hot yellow sand, sheltered from the wind, and in the full
blaze of a scorching sun, a cloudless blue sky above, and an immense army of dancing,
shouting willow bushes, closing in from all sides, shining with spray and clapping their
thousand little hands as though to applaud the success of our efforts.
"What a river!" I said to my companion, thinking of all the way we had traveled from the
source in the Black Forest, and how we had often been obliged to wade and push in the
upper shallows at the beginning of June.
"Won't stand much nonsense now, will it?" he said, pulling the canoe a little farther into
safety up the sand, and then composing himself for a nap.
I lay by his side, happy and peaceful in the bath of the elements--water, wind, sand, and
the great fire of the sun--thinking of the long journey that lay behind us, and of the great
stretch before us to the Black Sea, and how lucky I was to have such a delightful and
charming traveling companion as my friend, the Swede.
We had made many similar journeys together, but the Danube, more than any other river
I knew, impressed us from the very beginning with its aliveness. From its tiny bubbling
entry into the world among the pinewood gardens of Donaueschingen, until this moment
when it began to play the great river-game of losing itself among the deserted swamps,
unobserved, unrestrained, it had seemed to us like following the growth of some living
creature. Sleepy at first, but later developing violent desires as it became conscious of its
deep soul, it rolled, like some huge fluid being, through all the countries we had passed,
holding our little craft on its mighty shoulders, playing roughly with us sometimes, yet
always friendly and well-meaning, till at length we had come inevitably to regard it as a
Great Personage.
How, indeed, could it be otherwise, since it told us so much of its secret life? 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