he 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 rea