Men looked at each other, stupefied, holding their pipes from their
mouths. Then a wave struck the solid old tavern, hissed across its
gallery, and sprawled through the hall upon the bar-room floor. Not a
person in the house could understand what had happened to Kaskaskia
peninsula; but Jean Lozier stood on the bluff and saw it.
Jean was watching the lights of Kaskaskia while his sick grandfather
slept. The moon was nearly full, but on such a night one forgot there
was a moon. The bushes dripped on Jean, and the valley below him was a
blur pierced by those rows of lights. A great darkness was coming out of
the northwest, whistling as it came. He saw the sky and the turbid
Mississippi meet and strangely become one. There were waters over the
heavens, and waters under the heavens. A wall like a moving dam swept
across the world and filled it. The boy found himself sitting on the
ground holding to a sapling, drenched and half drowned by the spray
which dashed up the bluffs. The darkness and hissing went over him, and
he thought he was dying without absolution, at the end of the world.
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