Fifty precarious feet he rode, his mount becoming more unstable every instant, and he leaped neatly to the shore.

He came back laughing, and received for his pains two or three of the choicest phrases Jacob Welse could select from the essentially masculine portion of his vocabulary.
"And for why ?" Courbertin demanded, stung to the quick.
"For why ?" Jacob Welse mimicked wrathfully, pointing into the sleek stream sliding by.
A great cake had driven its nose into the bed of the river thirty feet below and was struggling to up-end.

All the frigid flood behind crinkled and bent back like so much paper.

Then the stalled cake turned completely over and thrust its muddy nose skyward.

But the squeeze caught it, while cake mounted cake at its back, and its fifty feet of muck and gouge were hurled into the air.