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.