“He’s--weathered--it!” roared Billy in my ear. “Yes,” I answered, “coulée--bank--protected--him. He’s--all--right--if--” I was going to say “if the wind doesn’t shift.” But before the words were out the wind had shifted. Rrrr-oooo-oof! It shrieked down the coulée and with a snapping and a cracking, like a small Fourth of July celebration, away went Tent Cunningham. The canvas rose in the air, flapping tragically; and beneath it, galloping in frantic haste, were the longest and thinnest legs in the world, as poor Cunningham, caught in the folds, was hustled onward. We could see nothing of him but legs, and as the flying tent bore a rude semblance to the human figure, the combination looked like a gigantic ghost, with slender black legs, hurrying off to haunt somebody. Such leaps and bounds as Cunningham made were never equaled by the winner of any Olympia, ancient or modern; and such another vision never was beheld outside the course of a nightmare. There was a fever of madness in its curvetings, its gesticulations, its wild plunges. Down into the Chantay Seeche, all a-suds from the recent bombardment, the specter swooped, and then came a mighty struggling and floundering. Surely no more ignominious death could be furnished the offspring of a noble house than to be held down by a tent and drowned in two feet of water! We sprang, nay, we flew to his assistance, for once on our feet the wind scurried us ahead whether we would or no. We spaudered and slid over the slippery mud, like novices on skates, and we should have over-shot our quarry but that we grabbed at the tent in passing. Now, it turned out to be in nowise so easy to get the man out as you might think, for the moment we lifted a fold of the canvas it caught the air like a kite, and down we went, under it, or over it, as the case appeared. In the former instance, it was no small job for us to get ourselves out again, let alone helping Cunningham. The very devil was in the tent, and it began to look as if the man would be drowned right under our hands, when it occurred to me to cut the knot of our complications. I passed my knife over a bulging place which I judged held some part of the victim, and instantly the head of James Cecil R. DeG. Cunningham popped through the opening--a head from whose mouse-colored whiskers and long nose the water dripped pathetically, and which regarded us with injured but vacant near-sighted eyes. Poor Cunny! His mind must have been thoroughly addled by the events of the morning, for the first words he spoke--in the tone of one declining an ice--were: “I don’t like this kind of thing at all, y’ know!” “You don’t, eh?” said Billy. “Well, if it’s the last act, I’m going to laugh.”