The True Story Book. Various

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СКАЧАТЬ with increasing weight. I moved slowly and carefully, for the whole ford was filled with large round slippery stones from the size of a sixty-pound shot to a two-hundredweight shell. I stopped to rest, and looked back to the ford mark: it was wholly gone, and I saw only the broad smooth wave of water which slipped over its head. Ten paces more, and I should be through the deepest part. I stepped steadily and rigidly, but I wanted the use of my balancing limbs and the freedom of my breath; for the barrels of the double gun and rifle, which were slung at my back, were passed under my arms to keep them out of the water; and I was also obliged to hold the legs of the buck, which, loaded with the 'wood-cat,' were crossed upon my breast. At every step the round and slidering stones endangered my footing, rendered still more unsteady by the upward pressure of the water. In this struggle the current gave a great gulp, and a wave splashed up over my guns. I staggered downwards with the stream, and could not recover a sure footing for several yards. At last I secured my hold against a large fixed stone, and paused to rest. After a little I made another effort to proceed.

      The water was now running above my belt, and at the first step which I made from the stone I found that it deepened abruptly before me. I felt that in six inches more that strong stream would lift me off my legs; and with great difficulty I gained about two yards up the current to ascertain if the depth was continuous, but the bottom still shelved before me, and, as I persisted in attempting it, I was turned round by the stream, the waves were leaping through the deep channel before me, and having no arms to balance my steps, I began to think of the bonnie banks on either side the river. In this jeopardy poor Dreadnought had not been unconcerned; at the first moment of my struggle he had gone down the great stony beach which lay before me, and, sitting down by the water, watched me with great anxiety, and at last began to whine, and whimper, and tremble with agitation. But when he saw me stagger down the stream, he rose, went in up to his knees, howled, pawed the water, and lapped the waves with impatience. Meanwhile I was obliged to come to a rest, with my left foot planted strongly against a stone, for the mere resistance to the pressure of water, which, rushing with a white foam from my side, was sufficient exertion without the weight of the buck and the two guns, which amounted to more than seventy pounds.

      After a few moments' pause I made a last effort to reach the east bank; but it was now impossible, and I turned to make an attempt to regain the Tarnaway side. I was at least thirty yards lower down than when I entered the stream, and the water was rushing and foaming all round me; another stagger nearly carried me off my feet, and, in the exertion to keep them, a thick transpiration rose upon my forehead, my ears began to sing, and my head to swim, while, disordered in their balance, the buck and the guns almost strangled me, I looked down the channel; the water was running in a white, broken rapid into the black pool below, and swept with a wide, foaming back-water under the steep rock which turned its force. The soft green bank before me was sleeping beneath the shade of the weeping birches, where bluebells and primroses grew thick in the short smooth turf, and, though they had long shed their blossoms, the bright patches of their clusters were yet visible among the tall foxgloves, which still retained the purple bells upon their tops. The bank looked softer, and greener, and more inviting than ever it had done before; but my eyes grew dim and my limbs faint with that last struggle. I felt for my dirk knife, for a desperate rolling swim for life seemed now inevitable, and, steadying myself in the stream, I cut loose the straps of the buck and the slings of the guns, and retaining them only with my hands, held them ready to let go as soon as I should be taken off my legs. When they were free, I dipped my hand in the water, and laved it over my brow and face. The singing of my ears ceased, and my sight came clear, and I discovered that I had lost my bonnet in the struggle, and distinguished the white cockade dancing like a little 'cailleach' of foam in the vortex of the pool below.

      Being now morally relieved from the weight of the roe and guns—though resolved to preserve them to the last—I resumed my attempt for the west bank; but when I reached a similar distance to that which I had gained for the other, I found an equally deep channel before me, and that the diminished water by which I had been encouraged was only the shoaling of a long bank which extended with the stream. I now saw that before I joined my bonnet, which still danced and circled in the pool below, there was only one effort left—to struggle up the stream, and reach the point from which I had taken the water. But this was a desperate attempt; for at every step I had to find a safe footing at the upper side of some stone, and then with all my strength to force myself against the current. But often the stones gave way, and, loosening from their bed, went rolling and rumbling down the rapid, and I was driven back several feet, to recommence the same struggle. The river also was still increasing, and the flat sand, which was dry when I left it, was now a sheet of water. While I was thus wrestling with the stream, I saw Dreadnought enter, not at his usual place in the pool, but at the tail, just above the run of the stream in which I was struggling. He came whimpering over, and crossed about a yard or two above me; but instead of making for the bank, he turned in the water, and swam towards me. The stream, however, was too strong for him, and carried him down. I called and waved to the forest, and he turned and steered for its bank, but did not reach the shelving sand till he was well tumbled in the top of the rapid, out of which he only emerged in time to catch a little back-water, which helped him on to the shore. The attempt of the dog to reach me had passed while I rested: and when he gained the bank, I resumed my effort to make the shallower water.

      Dreadnought's eye was turned towards me as he came dripping up the bank, and seeing me move forward, he ran before me to the water's edge, at the right entrance of the ford, whining, and howling, and baying, as if he knew as well as I that it was the place to make for. In a few steps the stones became less slippery, and the bottom more even, and I began to think that I might gain it, when, at the rocky point above, I saw a white mass of foam, loaded with brushwood, sticks, and rubbish, borne along by a ridge of yellow curdling water, at least two feet higher than the stream. I gathered all my strength, and made a struggle for the bank opposite to where I was. The water was already above my belt, and rushing between my arms as I bore up the guns. I felt myself lifted off my legs; again I held the ground. The green bank was only a few yards distant, but the deep water was close below, and the yellow foaming flood above. As I staggered on, I heard it coming down, crumpling up and crackling the dead boughs which it bore along. I stumbled upon a round stone, and nearly fell backward, but it was against the stream which forced me forward. I felt the spray splash over my head: I was nearly blind and deaf. I made a desperate effort with the last strength which I had left, and threw myself gasping on the bank.

      Dreadnought sprang forward, jumped over and over me, whined, and kissed my face and hands, and tried to turn me over with his snout, and scratched and pawed me to make me speak; but I could not yet, and gasped, and choked, and felt as if my heart would burst. I lay, dripping and panting, with my arms stretched out on the grass, unable to move, except with the convulsive efforts of my breath. At last I sat up, but I could scarcely see: a thin gauzy cloud was over my eyes, a heavy pressure rung in my ears, my feet still hung in the water, which was now sweeping a wide white torrent from bank to bank, and running with a fierce current through both the pools below. The back-water, where my bonnet had danced, no longer remained; all was carried clear out in one long rush down to the Cluag. 'Benedictum sit nomen Domini!' I thought, as I crossed myself. I stretched out my hand, and plucked the nearest flowers, and smelled their sweet greenwood scent with inexpressible delight. I never thought that flowers looked so beautiful, or had half so much perfume, though they were only the pale wild blossoms of the fading year. I placed them in my breast, and have them still, and never look upon them without repeating—

      'DE PROFUNDIS CLAMAVI AD TE, DOMINE!'

       THE FINDHORN.

      Such were the hazards on the fords of the Findhorn; but even by boat the struggle was sometimes no less arduous, though it enabled us to cross the water at a height otherwise impassable, of which the following СКАЧАТЬ