Without showing the slightest sign of undue haste the ferryman walks with swinging arms through his little garden, crosses the footpath, descends the wooden steps to the river, pushes off the ferry, and holds the rudder whilst the pulley runs along the taut wire, and the boat is driven across by the current. The boat bumps against the other bank; the stranger jumps in; upon reaching the hither bank he hands the ferryman a nickel coin and leaps up the wooden steps with alacrity. He has conquered the river, and turns either to the right or to the left. Sometimes when the ferryman is prevented from being at his post, either through illness or more urgent household affairs, then his wife or even his child will come out of the house and fetch the stranger across. They are able to perform this office as well as he—even I could attend to it. The job of the ferryman is an easy one and requires no special capacity or training. Surely he is a lucky man, this ferrymaster, in having such a job and being able to live in the neat dwarf villa. Any fool would at once be able to step into his place, and the knowledge of this keeps him modest and grateful. On the way back to his house he greets me very politely (with _Grüss Gott_) as I sit there on the wooden bench between the dog and the rooster. It is clear that he wishes to remain on a good footing with every one. A smell of tar, a wind brushing across the waters, and a plashing sound against the wooden sides of the boats. What more could I desire? Sometimes I am seized by another memory of home. It comes upon me when the water is deep and still and there is a somewhat musty odour in the air, and then these things take me back to the Laguna, back to Venice, where I spent so many years of my youth. And then again there is storm and there is flood, and the everlasting rain comes pouring down. Wrapped in a rubber coat, with wet and streaming face, I brace myself against the stiff west wind along the upper way, a wind that tears the young poplars from their poles and makes it clear why the trees here incline away from the west and have crowns which grow only from one side of the branches. When we go walking in rains such as these, Bashan frequently stands still and shakes himself so that he is the dark centre of a dull, gray flurry of water. The river at such times is a different river. Swollen, murky-yellow, it comes rolling on, wearing upon its face an ominous catastrophic look. This storm-flood is full of a lurching, crowding, tremendous haste, an insensate hurry. It usurps the entire reserve channel up to the very edge of the escarpment, and leaps up against the concrete walls, the protective works of willow boughs, so that one involuntarily utters thanks to the wise forethought which established these defences. The eerie thing about these flood-waters is that the river grows quiet, much quieter than usual, in fact it becomes almost silent. The customary surface