Page:The Campaign of the Jungle.djvu/131

Rh were asked to carry it across the stream. The soldiers plunged into the water without delay, being watched by hundreds of their comrades left behind. The men were without their uniforms or weapons of any kind.

Slowly the pair swam the turbulent waters of the stream, and hardly had they gotten fifty feet from shore when the rebels opened fire upon them, at first a few scattering shots and then a perfect volley. That the swimmers escaped is little short of a miracle. But they remained untouched, and, gaining the opposite bank, they ran forward and tied the rope's end to a tree-stump. In the meantime two other soldiers started over the Rio Grande in a dugout, but this upset and let the men into the water, and they had to swim as had the others. But they landed with their guns intact, and at once opened fire at the nearest natives that showed themselves.

All this had happened with great rapidity, and now the first raft was coming across the river, loaded with Kansas soldiers officered by Colonel Funston himself. The raft became the target for the hottest kind of fire, and as the ferrying had to be done by the soldiers pulling along the rope stretched from shore to shore, the passage was as slow as it was