Lewis, who was leaning over the port bow, heard the dull swish of the current against a cable, and saw that a raft of driftwood had already collected against it. He dropped on his knees and started to crawl aft to report.
Before he was half-way there, however, there was a dull red flash in the fog, accompanied by a tremendous report, and a cannonball howled over the ark. So startling a salute might well have caused confusion, but the pioneer arksmen did not lack coolness in danger. The horses, indeed, jumped and made some noise, but not a man spoke; and Lewis, reaching Jimmy, whispered his news.
He had hardly done so when a second red flash and report followed. They heard this ball skipping on the water ahead of them. Still another gun roared its hostile salutation, soon followed by a fourth report; and but for the poor shooting of the Spanish gunners, it must have gone hard with the ark. But, meanwhile, Jimmy was not idle. Swinging down from the port bow, he found that he could touch the cable with his foot. It was a strong line; but glad to find that it was not a chain, as he had at first feared, he sent Moses for a large, sharp knife from the cook-room. Then, bidding Wistar and Lewis bear a hand at a line which he looped round his own body, he reached down, and after several efforts, cut the hawser.
It parted with a splash, and immediately the ark floated on, silently as before. Four or five more shots were fired, but all went wide of the ark; the gunners appeared to think that the enemy was farther down-stream.
After passing the Spanish battery, the ark floated on during the remainder of the night, and until eight or nine o’clock the following morning, when, the fog clearing away, they found themselves heading down a narrow passage between two islands. Being still apprehensive of capture, they tied up under cover of a wooded bank in this narrow arm of water.
No one came off to them here, although they saw several boats in the channel outside the islands; and that night they went on again by moonlight, but had much difficulty at a succession of great eddies in the river. In one of these the ark floated round and round for an hour or more before they could row out of it.
Very few boats were seen that day, and these few were mostly market-boats, plying to and fro between the city and the numerous large plantations on both banks. Moses and Lewis had never seen such fine places before. There were extensive gardens of vegetables and flowers, and the plantation houses looked palatial to their unaccustomed eyes.
What astonished them still more was that the river was so much higher than the fields of cane and cotton on each side of it. When floating near the bank they could look down on the gardens from the ark roof.
Toward morning of the third night they arrived within a mile and a half of the city. As Jimmy had determined to go on in advance that day, to make inquiries as to the real condition of affairs, the ark was moored to what, in the dusk of the early morning, was believed to be a wild-wood bank.
After tying up, Lewis and Moses jumped ashore to look about them. They had gone but a few steps, however, when they found themselves in a grove of thick trees, with yellow balls showing amidst the dark-green, glossy leaves.