above, below, and beside me, some weird and hollow and unearthly.
I could hear rocks rolling over in their sleep on the bottom, and,
when the water was still, a sound like the cropping of lily-pads
away off on the river-margin. The bellowing of a cow terrified me
as it boomed over the sounding sheet of water. The river rang like
a mighty drum when a peal of far thunder beat upon it. I put out
my hands to take a stroke or two as I lay on my back, and felt
something floating under water. The feel of it filled me with
horror. I swam faster; it was at my heels. I knew full well what
my hand had touched--a human head floating face downward: I could
feel the hair in my fingers. I turned and swam hard, but still it
followed me. My knees hit upon it, and then my feet. Again and
again I could feel it as I kicked. Its hand seemed to be clutching
my trousers. I thought I should never get clear of the ghastly
thing. I remember wondering if it were the body of poor D'ri. I
turned aside, swimming another way, and then I felt it no more.

In the dead of the night I heard suddenly a kind of throbbing in
the breast of the river. It grew to a noisy heart-beat as I
listened. Again and again I heard it, striking, plashing, like a
footfall, and coming nearer. Somehow I got the notion of a giant,
like those of whom my mother had told me long ago, striding in the
deep river. I could hear his boots dripping as he lifted them. I
got an odd fear that he would step on me. Then I heard music and
lifted my ears above water. It was a voice singing in the
distance,--it must have been a mile off,--and what I had taken for
a near footfall shrank away. I knew now it was the beat of oars in
some far bay.

A long time after I had ceased to hear it, something touched my