MOBILE DIGITAL LIBRARY - SOCIETY OF YOUNG NIGERIAN ...

Price on John G., leading.John G. had belonged to the Force exactly as long as had the First Sergeant himself,which was from the dawn of the Force's existence. And John G. is a gentleman and asoldier, every inch of him. Horse-show judges have affixed their seal to the self-evidentfact by the sign of the blue ribbon,[70-1] but the best proof lies in the personal knowledgeof "A" Troop, soundly built on twelve years' brotherhood. John G., on that diluvian night,was twenty-two years old, and still every whit as clean-limbed, alert, and plucky as hissalad days had seen him.Men and horses dived into the gale as swimmers dive into a breaker. It beat their eyesshut with wind and driven water, and, as they slid down the harp-pitched city streets, theflood banked up against each planted hoof till it split in folds above the fetlock.Down in the country beyond, mud, slush, and water clogged with chunks of frost-strickenclay made worse and still worse going. And so they pushed on through blackest turmoiltoward the river road that should be their highway to Logan's Ferry.They reached that road at last, only to find it as lost as Atlantis,[70-2] under twenty feetof water! The Allegheny had overflowed her banks, and now there remained no wayacross, short of following the stream up to Pittsburgh and so around, a détour of manymiles, long and evil.