Bidding Grumbo follow, our hero once more set his face point-blank to his adventure. Keeping a sharp eye on the enemy's height, he begun making his way down the gulley into the valley--screening his movements, as best he might, where the gulley was too shallow to conceal him, by walking along in a stooping posture behind the weeds, or creeping along upon his belly through the grass; Grumbo, with great circumspection, doing likewise. In a surprisingly short time, considering this somewhat inconvenient mode of getting over ground, they had made their way to the hither bank of the river. But here they found themselves once more brought to a stand. Directly in front, as Burl ascertained by throwing in a pebble and noting the length of time between its sinking and the bubble's rising, the stream was almost, if not quite, six feet deep. To wade across, then go in battle with his garments all soaked and heavy with water--a serious hinderance, as this must be, to the free and lightsome play of his limbs--were but to give the nimble foe yet another advantage over him, desperate being the odds already. To be sure, not more than a hundred yards below the river was so shallow as to ripple over the rocks, where he might easily make the fording all but dry-shod. But there he would be in open view of the Indians, should they chance to be looking that way; whereas, by making the passage from where he was standing, he could throw between himself and them a small cane-brake, which crowned the opposite bank a short distance above. Far rather had the Fighting Nigger gone into the dance of death, rigged out in all his martial bravery--his moccasins, his bear-skin leggins, his bear-skin hunting-shirt, his bear-skin war-cap, and his war-belt with its gleaming death-steel--guise so well beseeming the Big Black Brave with a bushy head. But in a game so desperate, with objects so precious and dear at stake, the indulgence of so small a vanity were another thought not worth the second thinking. Therefore did the magnanimous Burl dismantle himself at once. Aware that, in the coming contest, he should barely have time to let fly the single bullet already in his rifle, when he must take to his hatchet and knife, and that thereafter his powder-horn and ammunition-pouch would be but hindering encumbrances, he divested himself of these appendages, also laying with them his moccasins, leggins, and hunting-shirt, in a pile together on the river bank. The next moment, with Grumbo swimming, hand over hand, close at his side, he was half way across the river, with nothing of him visible above the dimpled surface but his enormous bear-skin cap, and his right arm holding Betsy Grumbo high aloft to keep her priming dry.