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We were soon up to our armpits, then the water shallowed to the knee, then we stepped up to the neck, and waded on tiptoe, supporting the children above the water; and the same experiences occurred as those which we suffered the day before, until we were halted on the edge of the Little Makata, which raced along at the rate of eight knots an hour; but it was only fifty yards wide, and beyond it rose a high bank, and dry park-lands which extended as far as Simbo.
This was on the tail of a shoal which lies a little without the small isle to the N.E. Being over it, we found seven and eight fathoms water, which shallowed gradually as we approached the shore, to three fathoms, when we tacked and stood off a little, and then anchored in five fathoms, the bottom a fine sand mixed with mud.
Just before the suburb of Allerton the ground is a dead flat, and here the flying lake had covered a space a mile broad, doing frightful damage to property but not much to life, because wherever it expanded it shallowed in proportion.
Here it shallowed, and here, too, was shelter; but not wishing to mistake a bed of nettles or any such pitfall for solid earth, I kept pretty wide as I went on. The house was dark on this side, and the wall, as before, had no opening.
The water, which up to this time had been fully six feet in depth, suddenly shallowed to less than a quarter of that, so that he struck his knees against the bottom. The shock was very slight, and scarcely caused a ripple; but it takes only the slightest noise to alarm an Indian, especially when he is on the watch.
Along the southern bank of the river we saw thousands of American soldiers deepening and widening trenches that had been shallowed out by a score of trench digging machines, huge locomotive ploughs that lumbered along, leaving yellow ditches behind them.
The cattle were strung out in trailing manner nearly a mile, and on reaching the river near the middle of the afternoon, we took the water without a halt or even a change of horses. This boundary river on the northern border of Texas was a terror to trail drovers, but on our reaching it, it had shallowed down, the flow of water following several small channels.
There, about five hundred yards from the shore, the canoe stopped, and almost at the same moment the water shallowed, so that the man in the bows got soundings in ten fathoms; directly after, nine; then eight; and eight again, at which depth the water seemed to remain. "Come, that's honest leading!" said the lieutenant, brightening; "as snug a berth as a ship could be in.
By inches the water shallowed. Clark reached the high ground, and then Bill Cowan, with a man on each shoulder. Then others endured to the shallows to fall heavily in the crumbled ice and be dragged out before they died. But at length, by God's grace, the whole regiment was on the land.
Our depth of water, from the time we weighed till now, was nine fathom, but it soon shallowed to seven fathom; and at half an hour after one, having run eleven miles between noon and that time, the boat which was a-head made the signal for shoal water; we immediately let go an anchor, and brought the ship up with all the sails standing, for the boat, having just been relieved, was at but a little distance: Upon looking out from the ship, we saw shoal water almost all round us, both wind and tide at the same time setting upon it.
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