let down the apron and top of the wagon,
and fastened the reins loosely to the dash-board, saying as he did so,
"You must allers gib a hoss his head when he swim, massa; if you rein
him, he gwo down, shore." Then, undoing a portion of the harness, to
give the horse the free use of his legs, he shouted, "Gee up, ole Gray,"
and we started.

The noble animal stepped off slowly and cautiously, as if fully aware of
the danger of the passage, but had proceeded only about fifty yards when
he lost his footing, and plunged us into an entirely new and decidedly
cold hip-bath. "Now's de time, ole Gray," "show your broughten up, ole
boy," "let de gemman see you swim, ole feller," and similar remarks
proceeded rapidly from the darky, who all the time avoided touching the
reins.

It may have been one minute, it may have been five minutes--I took "no
note of _time_"--before the horse again struck bottom, and halted from
sheer exhaustion, the water still almost level with his back, and the
opposite bank too far-off to be seen through the darkness. After a short
rest, he again "breasted the waters," and in a few moments landed us on
the shore; not, unfortunately, in the road, but in the midst of the
pine-trees, there so entangled with under-growth, that not even a man,
much less a horse, could make his way through them. Wet to the skin, and
shivering with the cold, we had no time to lose "in gittin' out of dat,"
if we would avoid greater dangers than those we had escaped. So,
springing from the wagon, the darky waded up the stream, near its bank,
to reconnoitre. Returning in a few minutes, he reported that we were
about a hundred yards below the road. We had been carried that far down
stream by the strength of the current. Our only course was to follow the
"run" up along its bank; this we did, and in a short time had the
satisfaction of striking the high road. Arranging the harness, we were
soon under way again, the horse bounding along as if he felt the
necessity of vigorous exercise to restore his chilled circulation. We
afterward learned that it was not the Waccamaw we had crossed, but the
second "run" our native friend had told us of, and that the water in the
middle of its stream was fifteen feet deep!

Half-dead with cold and wet, we hurried on, but still no welcome light
beckoned us to a human habitation. The darkness grew denser till we
could not even distinguish the road, much less our horse's nose, which
we had been directe