For before
I could say amen, yours truly, or anything, that entire body of water
shot upward five hundred feet into the air, as smooth as a column of
crystal, curled over in broad green cataracts, falling outward with a
jar and thunder like the explosion of a thousand subterranean cannon,
then surging and swirling back to the centre, one steaming, writhing
mass of snowy foam!
As I rose to my feet to put my hand in my pocket for a chew of
tobacco, I looked complacently about upon my comrades. Stumpy Jack
stood paralysed, his head thrown back at an alarming angle, precisely
as he had tilted it to watch the ascending column, and his neck
somehow out of joint, holding it there. All the others were down upon
their marrow-bones, white with terror, praying with extraordinary
fervency, each trying his best to master the ridiculous jargon they
had heard me use, but employing it with an even greater disregard of
sense and fitness than I did. Away over on the next range of hills,
toward camp, was something that looked like a giant spider, scrambling
up the steep side of the sand-hill, and sliding down a trifle faster
than it got up. It was Lame Dave, who had abandoned his equine trust,
to come up at the eleventh hour and see the swans. He had seen enough,
and was now trying, in his weak way, to get back to camp.
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