THE TWO MEN CLUNG DESPERATELY TO THE BRANCHES THEY HAPPENED TO BE ON AND WENT DOWN-STREAM WITH IT
sure that the level was not injured they did a foolish thing. Going 'way down to the Mississippi bank, they climbed a giant gnarled oak to view the flood now sweeping on in fearsome grandeur.
The tree, long undermined, chose this hour to fall. The oak—roots, earth, trunk, branches, all—dropped into the stream and whirled away. The two men clung desperately to the branches they happened to be on and went down-stream with it.
The heavy roots, like the stone tip of an arrow, went first. The boughs floated with their lightest side up. In them rode the two explorers with the speed of an express train.
They crept together as full of terror as two children might have been. They wedged themselves in secure nests among the stout old limbs. Exhausted, one watched while the other slept. Hungry, they chewed the leaf-buds. In the most dangerous of all water-carriages they bridged the stream from side to side, yet dared not try to get ashore.
From a crumbling hill a panther leaped upon their wildly hurrying craft and crouched against the trunk, mewing piteously. Afraid of the men, of the flood, and of the rocking tree, it dared not move to attack or defense.