But, by and by, with a
nervous and jerky movement, he began to plunge it into the blackness
that upbore us, setting his teeth, and making precisely such thrusts,
methought, as if he were stabbing at a deadly enemy. I bent over the
side of the boat. So obscure, however, so awfully mysterious, was
that dark stream, that--and the thought made me shiver like a leaf--I
might as well have tried to look into the enigma of the eternal world,
to discover what had become of Zenobia's soul, as into the river's
depths, to find her body. And there, perhaps, she lay, with her face
upward, while the shadow of the boat, and my own pale face peering
downward, passed slowly betwixt her and the sky!
Once, twice, thrice, I paddled the boat upstream, and again suffered
it to glide, with the river's slow, funereal motion, downward. Silas
Foster had raked up a large mass of stuff, which, as it came towards
the surface, looked somewhat like a flowing garment, but proved to be
a monstrous tuft of water-weeds. Hollingsworth, with a gigantic
effort, upheaved a sunken log. When once free of the bottom, it rose
partly out of water,--all weedy and slimy, a devilish-looking object,
which the moon had not shone upon for half a hundred years,--then
plunged again, and sullenly returned to its old resting-place, for
the remnant of the century.
"That looked ugly!" quoth Silas. "I half thought it was the Evil One,
on the same errand as ourselves,--searching for Zenobia."
"He shall never get her," said I, giving the boat a strong impulse.
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