the lifeboat, and I saw that even the commodore's cold and
self-satisfied dignity was disturbed. The hawsers strain again. Creak,
crack! creak, crack! The lifeboat watches and comes nearer to us. There
is a mighty yell. We cannot go! Yes, we can! There is a mighty pull, and
you feel the boat almost torn asunder. Another mighty pull, a tremendous
quiver of the timbers, and you turn to see the angry water, which sounds
as if a hundred hounds are beating under us for entry at the barred
door. There is another deafening yell, the men tear away like frightened
horses. Another mighty pull, and another, and another, and we slide over
into smooth water.

Then I breathe freely, and yell myself.

The little boat seems to gasp for breath as a drowning man, saved in the
nick of time, shudders in every limb with pain and fear.

As we tied up in smooth water, all the men, from the _laoban_ to the
meanest tracker, laughed and yelled and told each other how it was done.
We baled the water out of the boat, and one was glad to pull away from
the deafening hum of the thundering cataract. A faulty tow-line, a
slippery hitch, one false step, one false maneuver, and the shore might
have been by that time strewn with our corpses. As it was, we were safe
and happy.

But the trackers are strange creatures. At times they are a quarter of a
mile ahead. Soft echoes of their coarse chanting came down the confines
of the gully, after the rapid had been passed, and in rounding a rocky
promontory mid-stream, one would catch sight of them bending their
bodies in pulling steadily against the current of the river.
Occasionally one of these poor fellows slips; there is a shriek, his