At this moment a new sound echoed in our ears. It was not the shouts of men, nor the detonation of guns, nor the pealing of the thunder. It was the hoarse roaring: of the torrent!
A warning cry was heard behind us. A voice called out: “Run for your lives! To the bank! to the bank!”
I turned, and beheld my companions rushing for the slope, uttering words of terror and caution. At the same instant my eye became fixed upon an approaching object. Not twenty yards above where I stood, and just entering the cañon, came a brown and foaming mass. It was water, bearing on its crested front huge logs of drift and the torn branches of trees. It seemed as though the sluice of some great dam had been suddenly carried away, and this was the first gush of the escaping flood!
As I looked it struck the portals of the cañon with a concussion like thunder, and then, rearing back, piled up to a height of twenty feet. The next moment it came surging through the gap.
I heard their terrified cry as the Indians wheeled their horses and fled. I ran for the bank, followed by my companions. I was impeded by the water, which already reached to my thighs; but with desperate energy I plunged and weltered through it, till I had gained a point of safety.
I had hardly climbed out when the torrent rolled past with a hissing, seething sound. I stood to observe it. From where I was I could see down the ravine for a long reach. The Indians were already in full gallop, and I saw the tails of their hindmost horses just disappearing round the rocks.
The bodies of the dead and wounded were still lying in the channel. There were hunters as well as Indians. The wounded screamed as they saw the coming flood. Those who had been our comrades called to us for help; we could do nothing to save them. Their cries had hardly reached us when they were lifted upon the crest of the whirling current, like so many feathers, and carried off with the velocity of projectiles!
“Thar’s three good fellows gone under! Wagh!”
“Who are they?” asked Seguin, and the men turned round with inquiring looks.
“Thar’s one Delaware, and big Jim Harris, and—”