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It will tell how they forded and swam rivers, with what consummate address they evaded the sharp-eyed Rebel pickets, how they toiled in the darkness of night through the tangled marshes of briers and thorns, barefooted and weary, running the risk of losing their lives, to warn our generals of Rebel schemes to surprise and destroy our loyal army.
After this retreat the auxiliaries departed; nor after that time did the enemy ever engage with us in very large numbers. Cæsar, discovering their design, leads his army into the territories of Cassivelaunus to the river Thames, which river can be forded in one place only, and that with difficulty.
They reached White River without mishap, and made their way down it until Green River was forded, when they struck across the country to Winty River, where they came upon a party of twenty hunters, who were engaged in trading and trapping as opportunity offered. They affiliated at once, for there is something in the presence of a common danger which draws men closely together.
They accomplished five leagues during the night, stopping neither at Bessinge nor at Ermance, where rises the famous château of the Mayors. They with difficulty forded the torrent of the Dranse, and everywhere they went they inquired for Master Zacharius, and were soon convinced that they were on his track.
And though all that they have done seems but the first hour of the infinite work of creation, yet I will not supersede them until they have forded this last stream that lies between flesh and spirit, and disentangled their life from the matter that has always mocked it. I can wait: waiting and patience mean nothing to the eternal. I gave the woman the greatest of gifts: curiosity.
"I'll go and look her up," Van Alen offered; but he found that he was not to go alone, for Otto was waiting for him at the gate. "I ain't got nothin' else to do," the boy said; "everything is held up by the rain." It was when they came to the little stream that Van Alen had forded the night before that they saw Mazie Wetherell. "I can't get across," she called from the other side.
'Twas a gloomy, savage pile of granite, perch'd at the extremity of a narrow neck of land, where every wind might sweep it, and the waves beat on three sides the cliff below. The tide was now at the full, almost, and the spray flying in my face, as we crossed the head of a small beach, forded a stream, and scrambled up the rough road to the entrance gate.
The waste in the matter of pipe-kindling had to be modified, and the mediæval makeshift of flint and steel restored. The fierce rays of Sol, through the media of our monocles, were also utilised to light cigars. What else on Saturday? Yes, Mafeking, they said, was fighting on still; and Generals Buller and Warren had forded the Tugela, en route to Ladysmith.
For us children there were compensations. The expedition took on the character of a high adventure, in which we sometimes had shelter and sometimes failed to find it, sometimes were fed, but often went hungry. We forded innumerable streams, the wheels of the heavy wagon sinking so deeply into the stream-beds that we often had to empty our load before we could get them out again.
To Chargle ten miles down the western fork of a valley rough and uncultivated by comparison with the Solab. Over a low range of hills with a very steep descent to Chargle standing on the left bank of the Pohroo river. Not finding a good place on that side I forded the river, which is not more than two feet deep, and encamped on smooth green sward under a walnut tope on the other bank.
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