I did not shout, for spite of all my efforts the space between me and the pig seemed to widen. Yet I kept on, determined to win, till, at the end of a short half-mile, we reached the Waccamaw—the swine still a hundred yards ahead! There his pigship halted, turned coolly around, eyed me for a moment, then with a quiet, deliberate trot, turned off into the woods.
A bend in the road kept my companions out of sight for a few moments, and when they came up I had somewhat recovered my breath, though the mare was blowing hard, and reeking with foam.
"Well," said the Colonel, "what do you think of our bacon 'as it runs?'"
"I think the Southern article can't be beat, whether raw or cooked, standing or running."
At this moment the hound, who had been leisurely jogging along in the rear, disdaining to join in the race in which his dog of a master and I had engaged, came up, and dashing quickly on to the river's edge, set up a most dismal howling. The Colonel dismounted, and clambering down the bank, which was there twenty feet high, and very steep, shouted:
"The d——d Yankee has swum the stream!"
"Why so?" I asked.
"To cover his tracks and delay pursuit; but he has overshot the mark. There is no other road within ten miles, and he must have taken to this one again beyond here. He's lost twenty minutes by this man[oe]uvre. Come, Sandy, call in the dog, we'll push on a little faster."
"But he tuk to t'other bank, Cunnel. Shan't we trail him thar?" asked Sandy.
"And suppose he found a boat here," I suggested, "and made the shore some ways down?"