Gliding out of the culvert, he swam to the right bank of the race, which was there built up five or six feet from the ground, crawled over it, dropped down under it, and ran along beside it till he reached the mill. He heard the shrill shriek of filing saws as he passed, and knew that the sawyer was busy. Dodging between great piles of slabs and lumber, he kept on, and soon gained the shelter of a fringe of alders that bordered the onward-flowing mill-stream. That led him into a swampy piece of woods. And so it happened that, by the time Sellick and his companions scrambled from the deck of the wheat-boat upon the bridge at the Basin, and turned back to the culvert, the fugitive was nearly a mile away.