A raft with twenty men upon it? Dare he? He named it to his aides. Dare? They would dare. They need not risk his life, more valuable than theirs. Here was greater fighting to be done. There was no taunting. But how skilfully they plied him too!
Up the river four hundred yards to give it greater impact they got some of the Bavarian woodmen to lash logs together and cross them with other logs, and three men from the banks of the Danube to guide the raft as well as they could and fend it off the banks with long poles. A small keg of powder and a hatchet apiece made the cargo for this short voyage. Except the polemen, the rest crouched low, holding by the ropes.
Nigel was there. He did not ask himself why he was there, risking his life, but what he would be able to do.
The river boiled and swirled. The logs creaked. The whole raft would have turned if it could, if it had not been for the frantic straining of the polemen.
The setting out of the voyagers was unnoticed amid so much din and turmoil, but they had scarcely fared half the way in less than a minute of time than musket-shot came scrambling among them. Two hundred yards more, a mere leap it looked along the water. They held their breath and braced their limbs for the shock. There was the half-built bridge. A crash! What a rending, and churning of the waters! They were upon it, the raft driven half upon it; of the raft's crew half of them were hurled into the river, the other half upon the bridge. Five of the bridge builders went down before them, two of them to Nigel's sword. Then the keg of powder was staved in and set endwise under the planking and a match made ready. But the bridge builders were reinforced by twenty stout pikemen, who pushed on to the bridge head and thrust at Nigel's men with fury.
It was an unequal contest, for while five men engaged the enemy, the other five or six endeavoured to free the raft from the timbers of the bridge, and Nigel waited in the deadliest peril, firing the match.
The raft was wellnigh free, the water began to take hold of it again, twisting it determinedly, when the Swedes, checked for the moment by the stubbornness of the Imperialists, bore down their opponents. But Nigel had got the tarred rope well alight. "Now for your lives!" he said, and regardless of pike-thrust and musket-shot they flung themselves on to the raft and swept on, while the powder sullenly exploded, breaking loose a full half of the work completed, and blowing seven or eight stout pikemen into the waves.
For Nigel there was the rushing water, a volley of musketry, a sharp pain followed by a momentary sensation of falling into the stream, then nothing.
But night was drawing in, and Gustavus could not cross.