had more fear,--then I was quite safe. Every stroke
took me more and more out of the power of the current, and there might
even be an eddy to aid me. I could not afford to be carried down much
farther, for there the channel made a sweep toward the wrong side of the
river; but there was now no reason why I should not reach land. I could
dismiss all fear, indeed, except that of being fired upon by our own
sentinels, many of whom were then new recruits, and with the usual
disposition to shoot first and investigate afterwards.

I found myself swimming in shallow and shallower water, and the flats
seemed almost bare when I neared the shore, where the great gnarled
branches of the liveoaks hung far over the muddy bank. Floating on my
back for noiselessness, I paddled rapidly in with my hands, expecting
momentarily to hear the challenge of the picket, and the ominous click
so likely to follow. I knew that some one should be pacing to and fro,
along that beat, but could not tell at what point he might be at that
precise moment. Besides, there was a faint possibility that some chatty
corporal might have carried the news of my bath thus far along the
line, and they might be partially prepared for this unexpected visitor.
Suddenly, like another flash, came the quick, quaint challenge,--

"Halt! Who's go dar?"

"F-f-friend with the c-c-countersign," retorted I, with chilly, but
conciliatory energy, rising at full length out of the shallow water, to
show myself a man and a brother.

"Ac-vance, friend, and give de countersign," responded the literal
soldier, who at such a tune would have accosted: a spirit of light or
goblin damned with no other formula.

I advanced and gave it, he recognized my voice at once. | And then and
there, as I stood, a dripping ghost, beneath the f trees before him, the
unconscionable fellow, wishing to exhaust upon me the utmost resources
of military hospitality, deliberately presented arms!

Now a soldier on picket, or at night, usually presents arms to nobody;
but a sentinel on camp-guard by day is expected to perform that ceremony
to anything in human shape that has two rows of buttons. Here was a
human shape, but so utterly buttonless that it exhibited not even a
rag to which a button could by any earthly possibility be appended,
button-less even potentially; and my blameless Ethiopian presented arms
to even this. Where, then, are the theories of Carlyle, the axioms of
"Sartor Resartus," the inab