—AND A BIRD FLEW WEST!
Perhaps the most perturbed man in North America, at this moment, was a man of 30 or thereabouts, with aristocratic features, clad in Mexican costume of pink silk shirt, corduroy suit, and dollar-studded black velvet sombrero, who sat upon a flat boulder on a tiny fog-encased island in America’s Big River, in company with 4 other oddly attired—and, it is to be admitted, somewhat hard-looking—individuals. The eyes of all of whom—outside of one who was fast asleep!—being riveted upon him in sneering skepticism—with granitelike contemptuousness—with a gelid frigidity which was colder by far than the flat boulder on which he sat. Though reason enough, perhaps, since he was in the process of relating—rather sketchilly, to be sure, since he had been given 10 minutes—and 10 minutes only—to do so; and was endeavoring to do it in 5!—the circumstances of exactly how and why he had happened to come out to this island today, and at an hour prior to the closing in of this dense fog—in the manner he had. And he had on his person, he well knew—as did also his hearers!—quite nothing concrete to confirm his odd little tale; and nothing, moreover, to corroborate its ever having happened, other than perhaps a Yale key which, though in actuality it was a lockbox key, could have been any key whatsoever; and a New York check payable to one “Ramon de Montesquez” which—as even the speaker had already been stoutly accused—could have been picked up by him at the airport up river, where many travelers changed from plane to train, endorsed by him slightly over the red-stamped endorsement of the night club lying near the top, and the obliterated edge of that night club stamping then cunningly drawn back in over the endorsement with the red ink available at the local post office—to make it overlap.
Thus the perturbation of the Mexican-clad speaker, for he had been accused, point-blank, of being a certain notorious criminal—bank robber, ex-convict, and murderer—in disguise—an accusation quite logical and justified in view of the fact that that identical criminal was known to be on this tiny island!—and, moreover, in this very group; and, the narrator knew, if he failed to convince his hearers—or at least one particular hearer who wore the star of the Law, and was armed with the loaded gun of the Law, the only result would be that he—the speaker—must die.
And die not by summary execution, no—but by drowning. For it was definitely written in the Book of Destiny—even as every man on this island practically knew!—that this slender, verdureless, even already partially inundated oval of land must be swept over today by millions of tons of water, submerging it to a height of 10 feet—keeping it thus submerged for a period of 23½ hours—waters released by the collapse of a huge dam far upstream, on this river’s main upstream tributary—a dam that was in the process, as even all on the island knew, of breaking right now. And on this island, ringed as it was just now with fog so impenetrable as to be impervious to human vision for more than 60—perhaps 70—feet—this spot of shrunken land which was now unfindable by any standard type of river craft—there were, strangely, no boats at all! By which the now vast reaches of dun gray water lying outside that wall of fog—and extending to far shores—could be traversed by all—or even by one man seeking help. And, of devices to carry a man to safety in a cataclysmic flood of irresistible strangling water, there were, strangely again, on this island, but 3 life belts and one rubber blow-up vest—which was, of course, exactly one too few for the human beings who were now grouped together at one point on it. And thus one man must, when that torrent of water swept down, face the avalanche—minus belt, vest, boat, log, or even stick of wood!
And so desperately, his aristocratic face drawn into a tense frown, the narrator related his little tale such as it was. His eyes dropping, at times, to the big flat stone Government island-marker, some 26 inches square, about which he and his scornful hearers sat, and whose weather-eaten, machine-chiseled letters read—as he saw them:
THIS IS
ISLAND 46 VII/b
Navigable Waters
BIG RIVER
$1000 fine, or 2 years’ imprisonment, to anybody removing this marker from this island or knowingly covering same with dirt or debris.
U.S. Bureau of Rivers and Harbors.
From the marker-stone, which lay but a scant 21 feet or so from the down-river tip of the island—less, indeed, than 1/3rd the island’s own entire length!—and which lay, moreover, at a point where the tapering oval of land was no more than 16 feet in width, the speaker’s eyes at times rose, and troubledly traversed the up-river extent of the island which, because of his position, lay directly ahead of him—at least such as there was now of it!—by some 50 feet—but no more—of extension. Traversed it, that is, as a pair of human eyes, rising from ground, would: first, as far as the island’s midmost and widest portion—a cheerful breadth, there, all in all, of some 32 feet—then roved on further to where—some 28 feet from where all of them sat—a low stone vault, with ornamental hand-chiseled corners, reared itself a couple of feet from the damp-looking ground—a vault with a heavy 3-foot-high concrete cross rigidly atop its black stone-like “jeticum” lid, yet curiously displaced as to the geometrical center thereof!—a vault at whose right-hand end lay piled, crisscross, three white-gleaming, comfortable-looking, cork-encased life belts. From here, the speaker’s eyes, ever rising, at times roved on—on to the island’s very tip, a further 20 feet or so beyond that vault—then on, even another 10 feet or so, across angry muddy waters seemingly trying to eat that up-river tip—to where, invariably, those eyes came to hopeless rest in a wall of impenetrable gray fog—a curious fog wall which, as the speaker’s eyes, unable to go a single inch beyond it, and roving therefore rightwise—or leftwise—back along it, seemed to bend gracefully back and completely around the island—both sides—encasing, within its seemingly rigid self and either edge of the island, an individual river of angrily purling dun-gray waters rushing ever past—a river exactly like its sister river on the opposite side—and either of which rivers was, from where the four men sat, no more than 40 feet in width; and both of which—as the speaker’s eyes, more than once glancing back of himself as he talked, saw—came together grumblingly at the island’s down-river tip and then, thus fused, became eventually—and shortly—swallowed up by those fog-walls which themselves had likewise fused—some 40 feet below the island’s down-river tip. A conspiracy, seemingly, by Nature, that entire layout, to isolate and obliterate—for this slender 70-feet-long oval of land, bearing its 5 marooned human beings, was literally squeezed between two miniature rushing torrents—the whole, by walls of fog—and everything, out and beyond even that, surrounded by vast stretches of both—so that land, and Civilization, might well have been as far away as Tibet. Though reason enough. For this was Big River—America’s famous and mightiest—Big River—in flood!
And as once again his eyes swept over this entire hopeless picture, the speaker came to an end of his little tale.
Making thus—at the hour of 3:45 in the afternoon—two individuals in North America clad in identical Mexican suits—with pink silk shirts!—and imitation-dollar-studded sombreros—out of communication with civilization, both—and exactly 1500 miles apart, one from the other. Except that one, of course, would again see his beloved New York. While the other—
And tense, the speaker waited—to hear the verdict on his tale.