There had been floods and the
river still stood very high, with dwarfish trees waist deep in it,
and rather a narrow arc of white dawn gleamed under the curve of the
bridge.
As his own boat went under the dark archway he saw another boat
coming toward him, rowed by a man as solitary as himself. His
posture prevented much being seen of him, but as he neared the
bridge he stood up in the boat and turned round. He was already so
close to the dark entry, however, that his whole figure was black
against the morning light, and March could see nothing of his face
except the end of two long whiskers or mustaches that gave something
sinister to the silhouette, like horns in the wrong place. Even
these details March would never have noticed but for what happened
in the same instant. As the man came under the low bridge he made a
leap at it and hung, with his legs dangling, letting the boat float
away from under him. March had a momentary vision of two black
kicking legs; then of one black kicking leg; and then of nothing
except the eddying stream and the long perspective of the wall. But
whenever he thought of it again, long afterward, when he understood
the story in which it figured, it was always fixed in that one
fantastic shape--as if those wild legs were a grotesque graven
ornament of the bridge itself, in the manner of a gargoyle.
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