The bottom of the canal that had been cut through the dam was
perfectly firm, composed of sand, mud, and interwoven decaying
vegetation. The river arrived with great force at the abrupt edge of the
obstruction, bringing with it all kinds of trash and large floating
islands. None of these objects hitched against the edge, but the instant
they struck they dived under and disappeared. It was in this manner that
the vessel had been lost - having missed the narrow entrance to the
canal, she had struck the dam stem on; the force of the current
immediately turned her broadside against the obstruction; the floating
islands and masses of vegetation brought down by the river were heaped
against her, and heeling over on her side she was sucked bodily under
and carried beneath the dam; her crew had time to save themselves by
leaping upon the firm barrier that had wrecked their ship. The boatmen
told me that dead hippopotami had been found on the other side, that had
been carried under the dam and drowned.
Two days' hard work from morning till night brought us through the
canal, and we once more found ourselves on the open Nile on the other
side of the dam. The river was in that spot perfectly clean; not a
vestige of floating vegetation could be seen upon its waters; in its
subterranean passage it had passed through a natural sieve, leaving all
foreign matter behind to add to the bulk of the already stupendous work.
All before us was clear and plain sailing. For some days two or three
of our men had been complaining of severe headache, giddiness, and
violent pains in the spine and between the shoulders. I had been anxious
when at Gondokoro concerning the vessel, as many persons had died on
board of the plague during the voyage from Khartoum. The men assured me
that the most fatal symptom was violent bleeding from the nose; in such
cases no one had been known to recover. One of the boatmen, who had been
ailing for some days, suddenly went to the side of the vessel and hung
his head over the river; his nose was bleeding!
Another of my men, Yaseen, was ill; his uncle, my vakeel, came to me
with a report that "his nose was bleeding violently!" Several other men
fell ill: they lay helplessly about the deck in low muttering delirium,
their eyes as yellow as orange-peel. In two or three days the vessel was
so horribly offensive as to be unbearable; THE PLAGUE HAD BROKEN OUT! We
floated past the river Sobat junction; the wind was fair from the south,
thus fortunately we in the stern were to windward of the crew.
