As they gazed a strange sight greeted their astonished vision. Something was coming down the river in mid stream. It seemed to be a man, seated in a canoe. The current swept him rapidly downward, and, as the nondescript craft came near, they saw a man seated astride of a log, keeping its head down the current by the aid of a flat stick which he held in his hand. As he neared the stockade he began to paddle vigorously, and whirled the head of the log more toward the shore. By this time the watcher on the point had run down to the water's edge, and the click of a rifle-lock sounded. "Ahoy, there!" he shouted. "Hello!" replied the man on the log. "How de dew?" "Hadn't you better come ashore?" said the sentry, persuasively, pointing his rifle. "Seeing it's _yew_, I donno but I _had_," replied the navigator, coolly. "Yew seem mighty pressing, somehow." "I'd like to persuade you to come ashore," replied the sentry, with a laugh. "Ain't I coming?" growled the man on the log. "Yew needn't put on sech style over me, I guess! I ain't said nothing tew yew, I judge. Don't be sech a 'tarnal fool tew keep p'inting that weepin at me. It might go off." "It will go off, if you don't come ashore, sir," replied the sentry. "Hurry up!" The Yankee--there could be no mistake as to his nationality--turned the head of the log toward the shore, and as it struck the land, began to rise slowly from the water. The sentry kept up his attitude of command so long as his Yankee friend showed only the ordinary amount of bone and muscle, but his eyes opened as foot after foot rose from the water, and the Yankee stood six feet seven in his stockings! A queer looking specimen of the _genus homo_ he was, such as, for the good of the race, nature rarely framed. In breadth of shoulder and girth of body he was no larger than men of ordinary size, and this added to his imposing hight. His face, which did not show a particle of beard, was round, good-natured and smiling, furnished with a mouth of mighty breadth, and a nose curved like the beak of an eagle. His arms were of extraordinary length, even for so tall a man, reaching nearly to the knee. His hair was of a flaming yellow.