“Oui, Monsieur.”
“Yes, John, come just here, it is perfectly good.”
“No, no—go a little further down. See the white gravel just there—it will be firmer still, there.”
Such were the contradictory directions given. He chose the latter, and when it wanted but one step more to the bank, down sunk both horses, until little more than their backs were visible.
The white gravel proved to be a bed of treacherous yellow clay, which gleaming through the water, had caused so unfortunate a deception.
With frantic struggles, for they were nearly suffocated with mud and water, the horses made desperate efforts to free themselves from the harness. My husband sprang out upon the pole. “Some one give me a knife,” he cried. I was back in the water in a moment, and approaching as near as I dared, handed him mine from the scabbard around my neck.
“Whatever you do, do not cut the traces,” cried his mother.
He severed some of the side-straps, when just as he had reached the extremity of the pole, and was stretching forward to separate the head-couplings, one of the horses gave a furious plunge, which caused his fellow to rear and throw himself nearly backwards. My husband was between them. For a moment we thought he was gone—trampled down by the excited animals, but he presently showed himself, nearly obscured by the mud and water. With the agility of a cat, Harry, who was near him, now sprung forward on the pole, and in an instant, with his sharp jack-knife which he had ready, divided the straps that confined their heads.
The horses were at this moment lying floating on the water—one apparently dead, the other as if gasping out his last breath. But hardly did they become sensible of the release of their heads from bondage than they made, simultaneously, another furious effort to free themselves from the pole to which they were still attached by the neck-strap.
Failing in this, they tried another expedient, and by a few judicious twists and turns, succeeded in wrenching the pole asunder, and finally carried it off in triumph across the river again, and up the bank, where they stood waiting to decide what were the next steps to be taken.