Chapter XI

It was, indeed, tougher business than we had yet known--a dash into the enemy's country, where my poor head was in excellent demand. D'ri and I were to cross the lake with a band of raiders, a troop of forty, under my command. We were to rescue some prisoners in a lockup on the other side. They were to be shot in the morning, and our mission therefore admitted of no delay. Our horses had been put aboard a brig at midnight, and soon after the noon mess we dropped down the lake, going into a deep, wooded cove south of the Grenadier Island. There we lay waiting for nightfall. A big wind was howling over the woods at sunset, and the dark came on its wings an hour ahead of time. The night was black and the lake noisy when we got under way, bound for a flatboat ferry. Our skipper, it turned out, had little knowledge of those waters. He had shortened sail, and said he was not afraid of the weather. The wind, out of the southeast, came harder as it drove us on. Before we knew it, the whole kit and boodle of us were in a devil of a shakeup there in the broad water. D'ri and I were down among the horses and near being trampled under in the roll. We tried to put about then, but the great gusts of wind made us lower sail and drop anchor in a hurry. Soon the horses were all in a tumble and one on top of the other. We had to jump from back to back to save ourselves. It was no pretty business, I can tell you, to get to the stairway. D'ri was stripped of a boot-leg, and I was cut in the chin by a front hoof, going ten feet or so to the upper deck. To the man who was never hit in the chin by a horse's hoof let me say there is no such remedy for a proud spirit. Bullets are much easier to put up with and keep a civil tongue in one's head. That lower deck was a kind of horses' hell. We had to let them alone. They got astraddle of one another's necks, and were cut from ear to fetlock--those that lived, for some of them, I could see, were being trampled to death. How many I never knew, for suddenly we hit a reef there in the storm and the black night. I knew we had drifted to the north shore, and as the sea began to wash over us it was every man for himself. The brig went up and down like a sledge-hammer, and at every blow her sides were cracking and caving. She keeled over suddenly, and was emptied of horse and man. A big wave flung me far among the floundering horses. My fingers caught in a wet mane; I clung desperately between crowding flanks. Then a big wave went over us. I hung on, coming up astride my capture. He swam vigorously, his nose high, blowing like a trumpet. I thought we were in for a time of it, and had very little hope for any landing, save in kingdom come. Every minute I was head under in the wash, and the roaring filled me with that mighty terror of the windfall. But, on my word, there is no captain like a good horse in bad water. Suddenly I felt him hit the bottom and go forward on his knees. Then he reared up, and began to jump in the sand. A