Page:Cruise of the Jasper B (1916).djvu/218

 carried away by excitement, would have pursued. Cleggett did not relax his grasp upon the situation, he restrained his ardor.

"Stand firm, men! Do not leave the ship," he shouted. "The day is ours!"

And then, turning to Captain Abernethy, he cried:

"We have routed them!"

"Look at them crazy horses!" screamed the Captain in reply.

The animals were rearing and struggling among the ruins of the broken gangplank. As the Captain spoke, they plunged aboard the ship, and the carriage, bounding after them, overturned on the deck—horses and carriage came down together in a welter of splintering wheels and broken harness and crashing wood.

A negro driver, whom Cleggett now noticed for the first time, shot clear of the mass and landed on the deck in a sitting posture.

For a moment, there he sat, and did nothing more. The pole broke loose from the carriage, the traces parted, and the two big white horses, still kicking and plunging, struggled to their feet and free from the wreckage. Still side by side they leaped the port bulwark, splashed into the canal, and swam