CHAPTER III {1}--THE RAFTS ON THE RIVER


We contrived to keep afloat all that night, and, the stream running
strong with us, to glide a long way down the river. But, we found the
night to be a dangerous time for such navigation, on account of the
eddies and rapids, and it was therefore settled next day that in future
we would bring-to at sunset, and encamp on the shore. As we knew of no
boats that the Pirates possessed, up at the Prison in the Woods, we
settled always to encamp on the opposite side of the stream, so as to
have the breadth of the river between our sleep and them. Our opinion
was, that if they were acquainted with any near way by land to the mouth
of this river, they would come up it in force, and retake us or kill us,
according as they could; but that if that was not the case, and if the
river ran by none of their secret stations, we might escape.

When I say we settled this or that, I do not mean that we planned
anything with any confidence as to what might happen an hour hence. So
much had happened in one night, and such great changes had been violently
and suddenly made in the fortunes of many among us, that we had got
better used to uncertainty, in a little while, than I dare say most
people do in the course of their lives.

The difficulties we soon got into, through the off-settings and point-
currents of the stream, made the likelihood of our being drowned,
alone,--to say nothing of our being retaken--as broad and plain as the
sun at noonday to all of us. But, we all worked hard at managing the
rafts, under the direction of the seamen (of our own skill, I think we
never could have prevented them from oversetting), and we also worked