The surging current carried me along, but not toward the bank. I saw no bank; for that matter I might as well have been in the middle of the ocean.
Even had the shore been in sight, I could have done nothing to approach it. I could have made no effort beyond that I was making—just sufficient to sustain myself on the surface.
I should soon sink. I began to feel certain of it—to contemplate it with a sort of resignation. Quicker than the changes of a kaleidoscope, the scenes of my past life came before me. Father, mother, sisters, and brothers, were all at that moment remembered, and she whom I had late left. Oh! it was agony to think I should never see her again!
While giving way to this despairing thought, something struck me from behind. I felt some hard substance pressing against my thigh. It caused a thrill through my flesh, for it was a contact unexplained and unnatural. I could think only of one thing, the snout of an alligator! I knew that I was now in that part of the Mississippi where this hideous saurian held his midnight revels.
Instinctively I increased my speed, but to no purpose; the bony proboscis still rubbed against my thigh. In another moment I should feel the huge jaws harshly closing upon and crushing it like a reed!
With an effort I turned round, to meet the monster face to face. In this way I preferred perishing.
In another moment I lay with my left arm clasped around it, embracing it as I might my dearest friend, as if it had been—
What I had mistaken for an ugly alligator, was a floating tree-trunk; like myself rudely flung upon the flood, but with a buoyancy far surpassing mine.
The log proved light enough to sustain not only itself, but faint sinking me; and straddling it longitudinally, I gave myself up to the current with a gratitude to God, whose hand, I could not help thinking, had been stretched out to preserve me!
After that, I became unconscious.