The major caught his shoulders, and turned his face to the stream. “Have you watched that water rising out there for nothing?” he asked sternly. “We are sure to be drowned if you don’t do as I tell you--all of us.”
Between certain death and uncertain death Jerry chose the latter, crawled over the hind mules, got on the leader and rode him off. He took this note with him:
“Nearest Encampment of any Division, C. S. A.:
“I am in the middle of Hatchers Run in an ambulance with my wife. The stream is rising rapidly and ambulance filling with water. Send immediate relief.
“DANIEL V. GREY, “_Adjutant of the Thirteenth_.”
After the boy was gone there we sat and waited while the water rose. I got very cold and Dan, who was yet weak from his wound and confinement, got chilled and stiff. After more than an hour of waiting we heard from the woods on the other side a noise as of men running, and then there came rushing out of the woods toward us thirteen men of mighty girth and stature. They were Georgia mountaineers who had been sent to our rescue. When they came to the water they didn’t like the look and feel of it, and evidently didn’t want to get in it.
“What is we uns to do?” they called across.
“Something to get us out of this,” Dan hallooed back, “and be quick about it, or we shall drown.”
They talked among themselves, but none of them seemed disposed to do this.
“Men!” called my husband, “I am hardly well of a wound, I am stiff and weak. I can not save my wife, who is up to the waist in water. Will you stand there and see a woman drown?”
They seemed ashamed, but none of them made the move to go in. Then the largest of them all--he seemed a mighty giant--stepped forth and took command.
“You say thar’s a lady in that ambulance?”
“Wall, I’m blowed! An’ she ain’t a-hollerin’ and a-cryin’?”
“Do you hear her?” asked Dan irritably. “She’s braver than some men I know. But you can count on it that she is wet and cold. We are nearly frozen!”
“Wall, I’m blowed! An’ she’s right out thar in the middle er that run, an’ she ain’t a-hollerin’ and a-cryin’! Tell you uns what I’ll do. I’ll swim out there and bring her back on my back. An’ then I’ll swim back agin an’ bring you on my back.”
“I can’t!” I said. “I’m cold enough to die now, and I can’t get in that water. I’ll die if I do.”