The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1878-12-11

DOaG II WOul nave ueeu Casu0o w ohiouo
q score of times before we reached
smooth water. As it was, it danced
along, frolicking, as it seemed to me,
with a CHASTITY defiance OF the destiny to
which it so surely hurried.
".Out of the Kissing ! out of the froth-
ing foam! We were Oh the calm, ma
jestic mass of water-the sea tide, you
might surely call it, that was to hurl It.
self and me to atoms.
"How oddly the mind acts n such
moments Of horror ! Would you believe
it q tradition of Niagara actually &C.
Cured to me as I flashed along. 1t was
an Indian legend. I remembered how
an Indian squaw, long the ~favorite of a
famous chief, found a young maiden was
to supplant her in her wlgwam. 1 re.
collect-I swear I saw it as plainly as II
imagination and reality were one-she
bore the bestowed child she had borne
to it's father from her forest home till
she reached a canoe. Then she padded
herself and her boy into the full stream
and cast the paddles from her, and with
q heavy heart, nerved by hate and re:
venge and misery unendurable, stood
up chanting her death song, that re:
counted her wrong and her misery, and
welcomed her coming escape from it,
till they shot into eternity amid the tur'
MOL OF waters below.
"Even while this was for an instant
flashing through my bewildered brain
was entering the very heart OF the
thunder of the fall. Moments only
separated me from my release from
agony. But the Indian stoicism was
foreign to me; I could have yelled
aloud in the terror that possessed me.
ct dared not await seated the awful!
last moment that was so near. 1 faced
nv fate ; I turned ; I stood up. look
ed straight ahead to where the curvlne
waters were to launch me to peace eter'
nal.
"The food had scarcely a ripple or
it's surface"
Was it real ? Within a few yards O.
the awful brink the canoe had shot by 8
flat speck OF rock that of the shores OF
| Goat island lay ~stirless on the very
edge of the abyss.
With a hardly conscious effort II
passing / had sprung to the slippery
surface. That moment had saved mt
from instant humiliation. The canoe
was gone + was standing, as yet alive
while, almost washing my very feet, the
sea of waters hurried on-on-on either
side Of me, and disappeared.
81 gasped a cry of blessing TOR de-
liverance. Deliverance? Wa it de.
liverance g.? For how long? I yet
breathed, but who would, who could,
save me from the rushing flood that
tore past me, from the laundering cata.
rsct that fell almost within reach OF my
touch?
"Oh, heaven! What had [ saved
life for? For a prolonged agony? For
such misery as must end In starvation,
madness, suicide? Could my mind long
bear the strain now upon it? How
could it?
"Let your eyes skirt the rounding
edge of this nearest fall. You can see
the very rock I was on. 1t looks but
wards from the larger space OF Goat
island, but those yards were as bad as
miles. They were an impossible gulf
between me and the stretch of rock that
seems so near.
"What we're my chances OF escape?
Dared T hope there were any? l was
almost too wild with terror to think at
all. Yet the brain seemed fevered with
life in such moments
"Should I be starved? Should l
slide into the rushing tide from cold and
exhaustion? Would sheer, ~unbearable
terror fling me to death from my utter
inability to endure the horror that
possessed me?
"What could be done for me? Was
rescue possible? Gould a boat be
Aoated in any way down to me? Even
if it could be guided to so small q point,
could T dare to trust myself to it?
81 looked to this very rock on which
we stand. Here, on this spot, 1 saw a
throng of excited spectators. 1 was
seen; and who could see a human being
in such peril and not family share the
terror that I felt?
"I could hear the calls of men to me
to have heart. I could catch cries to me
that I should be saved. I could see
women wild with pity. All! what could
their pity do for me9 Yet that, perhaps,
was the saving Of my life. Anything
anything to make me forget the ever
rushing waters that increasingly flashed
by my feet and disappeared.
"Men were crowding the river bank.
They were consulting, I could see, e1clt-
eddy, debating what should be done.
"There is q rush of some from the
Time passes, ages to me in my
agony. At last a boat comes, borne on
the shoulders of boatmen at run. They
lay it at the waters e6ge. There is a
rush of others with q coil of cable, not a
rope; rope they knew would be murder.
81 see them boring the boats sides
passing the cable througk-knotting
it-nailing it securely.
"The boat is towed along the still
far up stream. The crowd
it. What will they do? What
sane being will venture his life to save
Delayl delay! They have
stopped. Talk chatter! will they
never act? Oh, dear God, help him
bless him A canoe pulls out from the
shore with the boat in tow The canoe,
as we'll as the boat, has a cable secured
to it, by which those on the bank regu-
late it's drift down stream. How strong
ly it struggles up and out into the full
flood 4! Both cables are secured round
trees and paid out by numbers.
"Fighting up and across the tide,
drifting down it as the cables slack their
I watch-with what %hungering
eyes-the canoe steal inch by inch to
where it and the boat it holds are in a
line with my feet. The set of some cur
rent drifted me to the rock I stand on.
The boat is detached, straining on the
cable, guided, too, by a rope from the
nearly stationary canoe. The current
sets it toward me. It is brought up by
the strain of the cable ashore. Still it
drifts nearer and nearer.
"There are moments in life that
swallow up all the rest of existence In
our memories They haunt us awake.
dream them always. If 1 should
be a Methulselah with centuries of
breath it seems to me one thought
would always absorb all others, as
Aaron's snake devoured Pharaoh's
magician's serpents.
81 remember nothing else but that l
in bed at Forsyth's. I was told
1 had been in a death agony with a
brain fever. What mattered that? I
felt the blessedress of peace, of safety,