Page:The Wreck of a World - Grove - 1890.djvu/44

28 change and to set over to the other side, where with some difficulty they landed a few minutes later, marvelling at their escape. Pausing a moment to recover breath, the farmer looked across the river, which separated him by so narrow a boundary from the most terrible of deaths. Narrow as it was he knew it was impassable to the foe. Not one of those engines, however formidable, could pass through water deep enough to reach its fires and so extinguish its precarious life. Might not this simple fact have been taken advantage of to secure the victory to our fatuous countrymen? I am enraged when I think how they threw away certain victory just for want of a little coolness and courage.

Our messenger, then, having lost all, and lighted by the glare of his own burning homestead, fled along the high road till he arrived, as I have stated, at Jefferson City. There the panic was extreme. A doleful procession commenced to wind its weary course along the Eastward road that leads towards St. Louis, while others, more wary, laid hands on what boats, barges, or rafts they could find and drifted down the river, journeying whither they knew not. The suf-