"They have a more grotesque one about the moon crossing the river."
"What is that?"
"They claim that if one takes a skiff and goes to the middle of the river, exactly at midnight when the moon is full, one may see the moon in the water making all sorts of wry faces at the moon in the sky."
"I have observed that myself," said Reynolds, very gravely.
"The moon making faces?" she exclaimed with a little smile, looking inquiringly up into his face.
"Yes, the skiff or the wind breaks the surface of the water into ripples which cause the reflection of the moon to appear to do all manner of fantastic things."
"Oh, I understand it now. I had never thought of that."
"But," she added, after a moment of silence, "it would be cruel to explain away Uncle Mono's fanciful legend or myth of the Alabama and the moon. Don't you think so?"
"The old scamp is not so ignorant," said Reynolds. "It would not be so easy as you might imagine to destroy his stories. He would have plenty of expedients for evading the demonstrations of natural philosophy."
"I should hope he would," she said, "for there is something fascinating in all his grotesqueries. They seem to have a smack of genuine African wildness of poetry in them."