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Despite wading waist-deep through flooding rivers and swamps in freezing February snowstorms, going days without warm food, poorly clothed, and carrying only the minimum supply of gunpowder and shot, Clark and his men reached Vincennes determined to fight. Learning that he had arrived undetected by the British, Clark ordered great bonfires lit, both to warm his frozen men and to deceive Hamilton.
Jonathan clung to the sills waist-deep in the torrent, crept under the floor timbers, and then bracing his back held the beam until he dragged her clear. It happened a good many years ago, but Hank always claimed it had bent Jonathan's back. But, after all, they are not the things I love best to remember of Jonathan.
The tide had retreated further by now and the bow of the cruiser was almost beyond the breakers and Steve's journey was not difficult. When he got back, with the vinegar jug filled with gasoline hung around his neck, he reported the Adventurer waist-deep in water at the stern. "You fellows start the fire," he said, "and I'll go back and bring some grub ashore.
We found it a mile and a quarter broad; and, as it flows into the Lotembwa, the lake would seem to be a drain of the surrounding flats, and to partake of the character of a fountain. The ford was waist-deep, and very difficult, from the masses of arum and rushes through which we waded.
She set off, however, the thought of the drowning men hastening her on. For four miles she made her way in the storm and darkness, partly along the shore, scrambling over rock's, and wading waist-deep through the Lyne Burn and one or two other places where the waves had driven far up the sands, and partly across Newbiggin Moor, where the icy wind tore at her in her drenched clothing.
"In an hour the water had fallen to my shoulders, and when it became dark it was but waist-deep where I was sitting. To make a long story short, by midnight the water was below my feet and still falling rapidly. I waited a couple of hours and then started to cross. It was about fifty yards wide, and I was fully half-way over before it reached my chin.
"Look out, Moses," said Van der Kemp. "There it comes. Let go the sheet. Keep good hold of your paddle, Nigel." The warning was by no means unnecessary, for as the canoe's head was turned to meet the blast, a hissing sheet of white water swept right over the tiny craft, completely submerging it, insomuch that the three men appeared to be sitting more than waist-deep in the water.
Even now the pains shoot through my body when I think of how man after man plunged waist-deep into the icy water toward the farther branch. The pirogue was filled with the weak, and in the end of it I was curled up with my drum. Heroism is a many-sided thing. It is one matter to fight and finish, another to endure hell's tortures hour after hour.
A mile away the lips twisted into their sardonic grin as he noted where the fleeing man had floundered through a muskeg, the flattened grass telling of his frequent falls. In a balsam thicket he lifted a scrap of cloth from a protruding limb, and again he smiled. Where Wentworth forded a waist-deep stream he had lain down to rest on the sand of the opposite bank.
Slowly he recovered from his astonishment, saw Wabi and Mukoki quivering with laughter, grinned and then joined them in their merriment. It was not difficult now for the boys to force their way through the drift and they were soon standing waist-deep in the snow twenty yards from the cabin. "The snow is only about four feet deep in the open," said Wabi. "But look at that!"
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