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 plash within two yards of him was 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 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 forests, 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 that 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