Once, towards the end of this dreary
business, when we were all crowded into the Commissioner's boat,
where we took our meals, in the first really stiff rapid the keel
grated as usual upon the rocks. With a better line we might have
pulled through, but it broke, and the boat at once swung broadside
to the current and listed on the rocks immovably, though the men
struggling in the water did their best to heavy her off. The
third boat then came up, and shortly afterwards the Police boat.
But getting their steering sweeps fouled and lines entangled, it
was nearly an hour before Cyr's boat, being first lightened, could
swing to starboard of the York, and take off the passengers.
The York boat was then shouldered off the rocks by main force,
and all got under way again. At this juncture our old Indian,
Peokus--or Pehayokusk, to give him his right name, to wit, "The
giblets of a bird"--met with a serious accident, which, much to
our regret, laid him up for several days. In his eagerness to
help he slipped from a sunken log, and the bruise knocked the
wind out of him completely. We took off his wet clothes and rubbed
him, and laid him by the fire, where the doctor's care and a
liberal dram of spirits soon fetched him to rights. A look of
pleased wonder passed over his clumsy features as the latter
did its work. Caliban himself could not have been more curiously
surprised.
This was not our last stick: there were other awkward rapids
near by; but by dint of wading, shouldering, pulling and tracking,
we got over the last of them and into a deep channel for good,
having advanced only five miles after a day of incessant toil,
most of it in the water.
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