After an hour's interval a shout was heard from far down the river; then
later the plash of oars; then a cry hailing the approaching boats, and
the answer, "All safe!" Presently the boats had come alongside, and the
passengers crowded down to the guard to learn the details of the search.
Basil heard a hollow, moaning, gurgling sound, regular as that of the
machinery, for some note of which he mistook it. "Clear the gangway
there!" shouted a gruff voice; "man scalded here!" And a burden was
carried by from which fluttered, with its terrible regularity, that
utterance of mortal anguish.
Basil went again to the forward promenade, and sat down to see the
morning come.
The boat swiftly ascended the current, and presently the steeper shores
were left behind and the banks fell away in long upward sloping fields,
with farm-houses and with stacks of harvest dimly visible in the generous
expanses. By and by they passed a fisherman drawing his nets, and bending
from his boat, there near Albany, N. Y., in the picturesque immortal
attitudes of Raphael's Galilean fisherman; and now a flush mounted the
pale face of the east, and through the dewy coolness of the dawn there
came, more to the sight than any other sense, a vague menace of heat.
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