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For some distance back from the river its bottom was filled with back-water and was impassable. Half a mile back it was still deep, abrupt, and wet, though passable for infantry. Here Colonel Webster gathered from thirty-five to fifty guns.
The boat's head was brought round to the stream, for it was necessary to run her into it with the impulse of the back-water to shoot her forward, or she would have been drawn back, stern foremost, into the eddy, where the jaw of the water, over the point of the rock, would have swamped us in an instant.
But the endorsement came, for just then, heard above the rushing of the river along the back-water and beneath the mill, where the huge revolving wheel worked, came a loud "Ahoy!"
Sitting in the doorway of his store, he had watched the undesired one go down to the pier, push off in a canoe, and paddle down-river for a bathe. Quarter of a mile from the bend, he had seen him back-water, rise to his knees, gaze straight ahead in a startled manner, and then, turning quickly about, come racing back like one pursued for his life.
As soon as I made another step he plunged into the river, and in a few moments was rolling on the bank of silver sand thrown up by the back-water upon the opposite side of the river. As I advanced through the stream, he looked at me occasionally, and I at him, and the beautiful smooth sand and green bank upon his side for by that time I began to wish I was there too.
In the studio-skylight overhead a pane of glass had fallen in with a shattering crash as ominous as the Trump of Doom. Falling without presage upon the slumberous hush enveloping the little house marooned in that dead back-water of Paris, the shock of that alarm drove the girl back from the table to the nearest wall, and for a moment held her there, transfixed in panic.
A little way from the end of our journey we got out and dismissed the cab. He could not too soon know the scents and pavements of this London where the chief of his life must pass. I can see now his first bumble down that wide, back-water of a street, how continually and suddenly he sat down to make sure of his own legs, how continually he lost our heels.
For even as the century drew to its close, the old Bay colony was already drifting from its back-water moorings, out into the main current of the world's thought. None could know to what uncharted seas of political and religious radicalism they were bearing on.
Manitou was, however, full of back-water people, religious fanatics, little farmers, guides, trappers, old coureurs-de-bois, Hudson's Bay Company factors and ex-factors, half-breeds; and all the rest.
Their transports and supplies could be landed and hauled out in security. Moreover, the back-water extending up Indian Creek also, within the defensive lines, cut the position in two, and made communication between the two parts inconvenient. Immediately upon the capture of Fort Henry, work was begun on this line of infantry defence.
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