Knowing the character of the man, and his
thorough acquaintance with the locality, one ought to have accepted his
decision unquestioned; but I was not then so inured to disappointment as
I became in later days, and wished to see for myself how the water lay.
After a short sleep and hurried breakfast, Hoyle took me to a point
whence we looked down on a long reach of the river. At the first glance
through my field-glasses, every vestige of hope vanished. The fierce
current--its sullen neutral tint checkered with frequent
foam-clots--washed and weltered high against its banks, eddying and
breaking savagely wherever it swept against jut of ground or ledge of
rock, while ever and anon shot up above the turbid surface tossing trunk
of uprooted alder or willow. Mazeppa's Ukraine stallion, or the
mightiest _destrier_ that ever Paladin bestrode, would have been whirled
away like withered leaves, ere they had swum ten of the seven hundred
yards that lay between us and the Virginia shore. I could hardly believe
my eyes, when Hoyle pointed out to me the fording-place where, on the
23d of last December, he had crossed without wetting his horse's girth.
It was waste of time to look longer, so, in no pleasant mood, I returned
to the farm-house, where a council of war was incontinently held.
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