forth into
the rain and darkness.

After a few moments outside, I could see objects, in outline. So much
rain had fallen that the road was completely saturated. I got on pretty
well, however, until I came to the meadow a mile from home, where the
road crossed low ground and a large brook. There was a plank-bridge here
twenty feet long. The brook was now very high--a good deal higher, in
fact, than any of us had anticipated. It had risen several feet since
nightfall.

The moment I came to the meadow I found that there was water all over
it, and also in the road, extending back two hundred yards from the
bridge to the foot of the hill. I could not see how it looked, and, of
course, did not fully realize how high and rapid the stream had grown.
Old Sol splashed through the water till we came near the bridge. There
the water was up to my feet, in the road. On pulling up, I could hear it
rushing and swirling along over the bridge. I supposed the bridge was
undisturbed, for there were stones laid on the planks at each end, I
could see nothing save a black expanse all round me. Hesitating a
moment, I summoned my courage and dug my heels into old Sol's sides. He
went forward till his feet touched the first planks. There he stopped
and snorted. I gave him the spur. He leaped forward and seemed to strike
his feet on planks. But, as was afterwards ascertained, some of them
were washed out, and all of them were afloat. At his next spring his
legs went down among them. Then the full force of the current struck
him, he rolled over sidewise, and horse and boy went off the lower end
of the bridge, in eight feet of swift water.

It is needless to say that I was holding to the horse's mane for dear
life. As we rolled over the "stringer" of the bridge, I was partly under
the horse. We went down and I distinctly touched bottom with my left
foot, but clutched the horse's mane with both hands and hugged the
saddle with both legs. It seemed to me that we rolled over before we
came to the surface. Then we went under again, but a moment later, the
horse got foothold in shallower water, and floundered out on the further
side of the brook.

If I had let go of him I would certainly have been drowned; for the
skirts of the buffalo coat had been driven by the current over my head,
and with all those water-soaked clothes on, not even a powerful swimmer
could have got out. I felt as if I weighed a ton. My cap was gone, and
with it, my comforters.