She saw some shanty-boats down the river; she saw some up the river; but there was none near her till just before dark a motor skiff came down in the day's gray gloom, and passed within a few yards of her. When she looked at the two men in the boats she learned to know what fear is--river terror--horror of mankind in its last extremities of depravity and heartlessness. She saw men stooped and slinking, whose glance was sidelong and whose expression was venomous, casting covert looks toward her as they passed by into the gray mist of falling night. They entered a narrow waterway among the sandbars, and left behind the feeling that along that waterway was the abiding place of lost souls. She wanted to take up the anchor and flee out onto the river, but when she looked into the darkening breadths, she felt the menace of the miles, of the mists, of the wooded shores. Foreboding was in her tired soul. She examined her pistol, to make sure that it was ready to use; she locked the stern door, and drew the curtains; she went to the bow and looked carefully at the anchor-line fastenings. With no light on board to blind her gaze, she scrutinized all the surroundings, to make sure of her locality. In that blank gloom she was dubious but brave. Not a thing visible, not a sound audible, nothing but her remote and little understood sensation of premonitory dread explained her perturbation. She entered the cabin, locked the door, set the window catches and sticks, lighted the lamp, and sat down to--think. Her bookshelves were empty, and she was glad that she had emptied them in a good cause. It occurred to her that she ought to make up another list for her own service, and with pencil and paper she began that most fascinating work, the compilation of one's own library. As she made her selections, she forgot the menace which she had observed. In the stillness she thought her own ears were ringing and paid no attention to the humming that increased in volume moment by moment. It was a flash of lightning without thunder that stirred her senses. She looked up from her absorption. She heard a distant rumble, a near-by stirring. The wavelets along the side of the boat were noisy; they rattled like paper. Something fell clattering on the roof of the cabin, and a tearing, ripping, crashing struck the boat and fairly tossed it skipping along the surface of the water. The lamp blew out as a window pane broke, and the woman was thrown to the floor in a confusion of chairs, table, and other loose objects. Happily, the stove was screwed fast to the floor. The anchor line broke with a loud twang, and the black confusion was lighted with flares and flashes of gray-blue glaring.