"Your horse, Robert?" continued Glenarvan, turning towards the boy.
"All right, my lord, all right! He swims like a fish."
"Attention!" cried the major, in a loud voice.
This word was scarcely pronounced, when the enormous wall of water reached them. A huge wave, forty feet high, overwhelmed the fugitives with a terrible roar. Men and beasts, everything, disappeared in a whirlpool of foam. A ponderous liquid mass engulfed them in its furious tide. When the deluge had passed, the men regained the surface, and rapidly counted their numbers; but the horses, except Thaouka, had disappeared forever.
"Courage! courage!" cried Glenarvan, who supported Paganel with one arm and swam with the other.
"All right! all right!" replied the worthy geographer; "indeed I am not sorry——"
What was he not sorry for? No one ever knew; for the poor man was forced to swallow the end of his sentence in half a pint of muddy water.
The major calmly advanced, taking a regular stroke of which the most skillful swimmer would not have been ashamed. The sailors worked their way along like porpoises in their native element. As for Robert, he clung to Thaouka's mane, and was thus drawn along. The horse proudly cut the waters, and kept himself instinctively on a line with the tree, towards which the current bore him, and which was now not far distant.
In a few moments the entire party reached it. It was fortunate; for, if this refuge had failed, all chance of safety would have vanished, and they must have perished in the waves. The water was up to the top of the trunk where the main branches grew, so that it was easy to grasp them.
Thalcave, leaving his horse, and lifting Robert, seized the first limb, and soon his powerful arms had lodged the exhausted swimmers in a place of safety. But Thaouka, carried away by the current, was rapidly disappearing. He turned his intelligent head towards his master, and, shaking his long mane, neighed for him beseechingly.