"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.

Whether it was due to the slanting sunlight, or the refraction from the
wonderfully illumined water, I cannot say, but, whatever the cause, I found
it difficult to focus my sight properly upon the flying apparition. It
seemed, however, to be a man standing upright in a sort of flat-bottomed
boat, steering with a long oar, and being carried down the opposite shore
at a tremendous pace. He apparently was looking across in our direction,