; it was uncomfortably warm, and he
snatched it out.

As he rose to the surface, gasping for breath, he saw that he had been a
long time under water; he was perceptibly farther down stream--nearer to
safety. The soldiers had almost finished reloading; the metal ramrods
flashed all at once in the sunshine as they were drawn from the barrels,
turned in the air, and thrust into their sockets. The two sentinels fired
again, independently and ineffectually.

The hunted man saw all this over his shoulder; he was now swimming
vigorously with the current. His brain was as energetic as his arms and
legs; he thought with the rapidity of lightning.

"The officer," he reasoned, "will not make that martinet's error a second
time. It is as easy to dodge a volley as a single shot. He has probably
already given the command to fire at will. God help me, I cannot dodge
them all!"

An appalling splash within two yards of him, followed by a loud, rushing
sound, _diminuendo_, which seemed to travel back through the air to the
fort and died in an explosion which stirred the very river to its deeps! A
rising sheet of water, which curved over him, fell down upon him, blinded
him, strangled him! The cannon had taken a hand in the game. As he shook
his head free from the commotion of the smitten water he heard the
deflected shot humming through the air ahead, and in an instant it was
cracking and smashing the branches in the forest beyond.

"They will not do that again," he thought; "the next time they will use a
charge of grape. I must keep my eye upon the gun; the smoke will apprise
me--the report arrives too late; it lags behind the missile. That is a
good gun."

Suddenly he felt himself whirled round and round--spinning like a top. The
water, the banks, the forest, the now distant bridge, fort, and men--all
were commingled and blurred. Objects were represented by their colors
only; circular horizontal streaks of color--that was all he saw. He had
been caught in a vortex and was being whirled on with a velocity of
advance and gyration which made him giddy and sick. In a few moments he
was flung upon the gravel at the foot of the left bank of the stream--the
southern bank--and behind a projecting point, which concealed him from his
enemies. The sudden arrest of his motion, the abrasion of one of his hands
on the gravel, restored him, and he wept with delight. He dug his fingers
into the sand, threw it over himself in handfuls, and audibl