THE GREAT RIVER BY HARRY TOBIN

The night was dark and soft, and there was easy to feel the great river's. I sat on earth in the grass and other of the two ordinary seamen, Leo, was sitting beside me. The third of us - an ordinary seaman, stood little apart. He was a man with heavy bulk. I heard his name uttered; it sounded like, Aki, or something like that, I at once found him be sullen, he has been cutting his hair off and had shaved his head so that everyone could be seen his head shining in the sunlight like a polished egg. As Aki was red and robust, Leo was tiny and slim.

We all were sitting or standing, waiting for our captain.

There was the boatmen's hut where our captain had entered. He was going to deal with the boatmen to have a drive, up to the ship.

I felt tired and was sitting double-folded, and there was a pain in my stomach for been sitting so long time in that cramped plane, eleven long hours in that fully loaded tube, unable to move anywhere.

During those eleven hours flay there has been a dramatic change in the environment, been no more than twenty hours ago white winter around, and Helsinki 15 C below zero. There on the Mississippi, the temperature showed 20c above the zero, and I still wore my winter boots.

Sitting there in green I was truck by the odour of the earth and hay and the moisture of open water, all those things after ice blocked sea and the frozen nature sterilized by the winter.

The hut's door opened, and there was seen a man's silhouette in the lighted doorway. It was