Alexander--and quite as courageous. He seemed to fear it almost not at
all. And I should have felt little surprise had he taken me in his arms
and stepped easily over that mile or so of liquid madness. He talked
calmly about it--quite calmly. He explained at what angle one should
hold one's body in the current, and how one should conduct one's legs
and arms in the whirlpools, providing one should swim across.

_Swim across!_ Why, it took a giant even to talk that way! For the
summer had smitten the distant mountains, and the June floods ran. Far
across the yellow swirl that spread out into the wooded bottom-lands, we
watched the demolition of a little town. The siege had reached the
proper stage for a sally, and the attacking forces were howling over the
walls. The sacking was in progress. Shacks, stores, outhouses suddenly
developed a frantic desire to go to St. Louis. It was a weird retreat in
very bad order. A cottage with a garret window that glared like the eye
of a Cyclops, trembled, rocked with the athletic lift of the flood, made
a panicky plunge into a convenient tree; groaned, dodged, and took off
through the brush like a scared cottontail. I felt a boy's pity and
sympathy for those houses that got up and took to their legs across the
yellow waste. It did not seem fair. I have since experienced the same
feeling for a jack-rabbit with the hounds a-yelp at its heels.

But--to _swim_ this thing! To fight this cruel, invulnerable, resistless
giant that went roaring down the world with a huge uprooted oak tree in
its mouth for a toothpick! This yellow, sinuous beast with hell-broth
slavering from its jaws! This dare-devil boy-god that sauntered along
with a town in its pocket, and a steepled church under its arm for a
moment's toy! Swim _this_?

For days I marvelled at the magnificence of being a fullgrown man,