would hold out.

Hour after hour she kept at her work, sweeping round the long bends where
the river was hollowing out one bank and building new shore on the
opposite one, so as gradually to shift its channel; by clipper-shaped
islands, sharp at the bows looking up stream, sharp too at the stern,
looking down,--their shape solving the navigator's problem of least
resistance, as a certain young artist had pointed out; by slumbering
villages; by outlying farm-houses; between cornfields where the young
plants were springing up in little thready fountains; in the midst of
stumps where the forest had just been felled; through patches, where the
fire of the last great autumnal drought had turned all the green beauty
of the woods into brown desolation; and again amidst broad expanses of
open meadow stretching as far as the eye could reach in the uncertain
light. A faint yellow tinge was beginning to stain the eastern horizon.
Her boat was floating quietly along, for she had at last taken in her
oars, and she was now almost tired out with toil and excitement. She
rested her head upon her hands, and felt her eyelids closing in spite of
herself. And now there stole upon her ear a low, gentle, distant murmur,
so soft that it seemed almost to mingle with the sound of her own
breathing, but so steady, so uniform, that it soothed her to sleep, as if
it were the old cradle-song the ocean used to sing to her, or the lullaby
of her fair young mother.

So she glided along, slowly, slowly, down the course of the winding
river, and the flushing dawn kindled around her as she slumbered, and the
low, gentle murmur grew louder and louder, but still she slept, dreaming
of the murmuring ocean.