there's ground at the bottom." Then I kicked the false prophet in the
flanks with my heels. The horse was standing on the edge of the sodded
bank. When my heels struck him, he jumped as far as he could out into
the river.

There was a great splash. The horse dropped like a stone, his legs stiff
as ramrods, his neck doubled under and his back bowed. It was a bucking
jump and meant going to the bottom. I felt the water rush up and close
over my head.

I clamped my legs to the horse, held my breath, and went down in the
saddle. I thought we should never reach the bottom of that river. The
current tugged, trying to pull me loose and whirl me away. The horse
under me felt like a millstone. The weight of water pressed like some
tremendous thumb. Then we struck the rock bottom and began to come up.
The sensation changed. I seemed now to be thrust violently from below
against a weight pressing on my head, as though I were being used by
some force under me to drive the containing cork out of the bottle in
which we were enclosed. I began to be troubled for breath, my head rang.
The distance seemed interminable. Then we popped up on the top of the
river, and I filled with the blessed air to the very tips of my fingers.

The horse blew the water out of his nostrils and doubled his long legs.
I thought he was going down again, and, seizing the top of the saddle
horn, I loosed my feet in the stirrups. If El Mahdi returned to the
deeps of that river, he would go by himself.

He stretched out his grey neck, sank until the water came running over
the saddle, and then began to swim with long, graceful strokes of his
iron legs as though it were the easiest thing in the world.

CHAPTER XV

WHEN PROVIDENCE IS PAGAN

The strength of the current did not seem to be so powerful as I had
judged it. However, its determination was difficult. The horse swam with
great ease, but he was an extraordinary horse, with a capacity for doing
with this apparent ease everything which it pleased him to attempt. I do
not know whether this arose from the stirring of larger powers
ordinarily latent, or whether the horse's manner somehow concealed the
amount of the effort. I think the former is more probable.

Half-way across the river, we were not more than twenty yards
down-stream from the ferry landing. Ump shouted to turn down into the
eddy, and I swung El Mahdi around. A dozen long strokes brought us into
the almost quiet water of the great