Beyond, like a great black wall, arose higher ground, occasionally jutting into bare bluffs outlined against the lighter sky; again diversified by gaunt dead trees, their fleshless limbs extended upward toward ghostly pillars of vapor ever floating from off the river's surface.
Occasionally, jaggedly uneven, close-set trunks of forest growth would appear, spectral in solemn ugliness, a veritable hedge, impenetrable and grim.
If, with a shudder of disgust, I turned away from that lorn, dead line of shore, my eyes swept a waste of waters slipping solemnly past, while farther out, where sky and stream met and mingled in wild riot, the surging river swirled and leaped, its white-capped waves evidencing resistless volume.

It was a sight to awe one, that immense mass pouring forth from the upper darkness, flashing an instant beneath the star-gleam, only to disappear, a restless, relentless flood, black, unpitying, impenetrable, mysterious, a savage monster, beyond whose outstretched claws we crept, yet who at any moment might clutch us helpless in a horrible embrace.

It was a sight to stun, that brutal flood, gliding ever downward, while, far as eye could see, stretched the same drear expanse of cruel waters.
From out that mystery would suddenly emerge, rolling toward us, as if born of the shadows, some grim apparition, a wildly tossing figure, with gaunt, uplifted arms beating the air, to startle for an instant, then fade from our ken into the dimness below.

Well I knew it was only driftwood, the gnarled trunk of uprooted tree made sport with by mad waves, yet more than once I shrank backward, my unstrung nerves tingling, as such shapeless, uncanny thing was hurled past like an arrow.

Nor were the noises that broke the silence less fearsome.