For a day and night the surcharged river
poured half its waters through the straggling camp. At the end of that
time every vestige of the little settlement was swept away; all that was
left was scattered far and wide in the country, caught in the hanging
branches of water-side willows and alders, embayed in sluggish pools,
dragged over submerged meadows, and one fragment--bearing up Elijah
Martin--pursuing the devious courses of an unknown tributary fifty miles
away. Had he been a rash, impatient man, he would have been speedily
drowned in some earlier desperate attempt to reach the shore; had he
been an ordinary bold man, he would have succeeded in transferring
himself to the branches of some obstructing tree; but he was neither,
and he clung to his broken raft-like berth with an endurance that
was half the paralysis of terror and half the patience of habitual
misfortune. Eventually he was caught in a side current, swept to the
bank, and cast ashore on an unexplored wilderness.
His first consciousness was one of hunger that usurped any sentiment
of gratitude for his escape from drowning. As soon as his cramped limbs
permitted, he crawled out of the bushes in search of food. He did
not know where he was; there was no sign of habitation--or even
occupation--anywhere. He had been too terrified to notice the direction
in which he had drifted--even if he had possessed the ordinary knowledge
of a backwoodsman, which he did not.
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