Singly and in bunches the lantern-bearing boats came home to their
shelter in the pecan-trees, leaving the engulfed plain to starlight. No
lamp was seen, no music tinkled there; in the water streets the evening
wind made tiny tracks, and then it also deserted the town, leaving the
liquid sheet drawn and fitted smoothly to place. Nothing but water,
north, west, and south; a vast plain reflecting stars, and here and
there showing spots like burnished shields. The grotesque halves of
buildings in its foreground became as insignificant as flecks of shadow.
The sky was a clear blue dome, the vaporous folds of the Milky Way
seeming to drift across it in indistinct light.
Now, above the flowing whisper of the inland sea, Jean Lozier could hear
other sounds. Thunder began in the north, and rolled with its cloud
toward the point where Okaw and Mississippi met; shaggy lowered heads
and flying tails and a thousand hoofs swept past him; and after them
fleet naked men, who made themselves one with the horses they rode.
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