Come Love a Stranger

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THE quiet peace of the moonlit river was broken by the hushed murmur of voices and the steady pulsing of pistons in a powerful engine. The rushing burble of water beneath a stout hull softly harmonized with the long sighs of these monster steam pistons and the chugging splash of water under the paddle wheel as the huge floating palace came around the bend and left in its wake a luminescent path beneath the chasing moon. Lanterns shone from every deck, seeming to set the stern-wheeler ablaze with lights, but inside the pilothouse, which commanded a position well forward and high on the uppermost deck, only a binnacle lamp was lighted, giving off a dim glow as the helmsman grasped the wheel and scanned the oil-black surface of the river far ahead. The captain stood close beside the helmsman and, in a low voice, warned of approaching landmarks or shoals. Under his direction, the steamer slid with firm, square-shouldered ease around a sandbar and, further up the river, a floating tangle that had attached itself to a small uprooted tree.

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