The Re-Creation of Brian Kent | Page 8

swept onward through the night,
following its ordained way to the mighty sea.
As if summoned again by some dark spirit that brooded over the
sombre, rushing flood, the man rose heavily to his feet. His face turned
once more toward the window. A moment he stood there, listening,
listening; then wheeling back to the whisky bottle and the glass on the
bureau, he quickly poured, and drank again.
Nodding his head in the manner of one reaching a conclusion, he
looked slowly about the room, while a frightful grin of hopeless,
despairing triumph twisted his features, and his lips moved as if he
breathed reckless defiance to an invisible ghostly company.
Moving, now, with a decision and purpose that suggested a native
strength of character, the man quickly packed a suit-case with various
articles of clothing from the bureau drawers and the closet. He was in
the act of closing the suit-case when he stopped suddenly, and, with a
shrug of his shoulders, turned away. Then, as if struck by another

thought, he stooped again over his baggage, and drew forth a fresh,
untouched bottle of whisky.
"I guess you are the only baggage I'll need where I am going," he said,
whimsically; and, leaving the open suit-case where it lay, he crossed
the room, and extinguished the light. Cautiously, he unlocked and
opened the door. For a moment, he stood listening. Then, with the
bottle hidden under his coat, he stole softly from the room.
A few minutes later, the man stood out there in the night, on the bank
of the river. Behind him the outlines of the scattered houses that made
the little town were lost against the dusk of the hillside. From the
ghostly tree-shadows that marked the opposite bank, the solemn hills
rose out of the deeper darkness of the lowlands that edged the stream in
sombre mystery. There was no break in the heavy clouds to permit the
gleam of a friendly star. There was no sound save the soft swish of the
water against the bank where he stood, the chirping of a bird in the
near-by willows, and the occasional splash of a leaping fish or water
animal. But to the man there was a feeling of sound. To the lonely
human wreck standing there in the darkness, the river called--called
with fearful, insistent power.
From under the black wall of the night the dreadful flood swept out of
the Somewhere of its beginning. Past the man the river poured its
mighty strength with resistless, smoothly flowing, terrible force. Into
the darkness it swept on its awful way to the Nowhere of its ending.
For uncounted ages, the river had poured itself thus between those
walls of hills. For untold ages to come, until the end of time itself, the
stream would continue to pour its strength past that spot where the man
stood.
Out of the night, the voice of the river had called to the man, as he
stood at the window of his darkened room. And the man had come,
now, to answer the call. Cautiously, he went down the bank toward the
edge of the dark, swirling water. His purpose was unmistakable. Nor
was there any hint of faltering, now, in his manner. He had reached his
decision. He knew what he had come to do.

The man's feet were feeling the mud at the margin of the stream when
his legs touched something, and a low, rattling sound startled him.
Then he remembered. A skiff was moored there, and he had brushed
against the chain that led from the bow of the boat to the stump of a
willow higher up on the bank. The man had seen the skiff,--a rude,
flat-bottomed little craft, known to the Ozark natives as a
John-boat,--just before sunset that evening. But there had been no boat
in his thoughts when he had come to answer the call of the river, and in
the preoccupation of his mind, as he stood there in the night beside the
stream, he had not noticed it, as it lay so nearly invisible in the darkness.
Mechanically, he stooped to feel the chain with his free hand. A
moment later, he had placed his bottle of whisky carefully in the boat,
and was loosing the chain painter from the willow stump.
"Why not?" he said to himself. "It will be easier in midstream,-- and
more certain."
Carefully, so that no sound should break the stillness, he stowed the
chain in the bow, and then worked the skiff around until it pointed out
into the stream. Then, with his hands grasping the sides of the little
craft, and the weight of his body on one knee in the stern, he pushed
vigorously with his free foot against the