We
Sorted Ourselves Out Hastily And Sent Her At It Again.
Smash went a
sorely tried pole and a paddle.
Round and round we spun in an
exultant whirlpool, which, in a light-hearted, maliciously joking
way, hurled us tail first out of it into the current. Now the grand
point in these canoes of having both ends alike declared itself; for
at this juncture all we had to do was to revolve on our own axis and
commence life anew with what had been the bow for the stern. Of
course we were defeated, we could not go up any further without the
aid of our lost poles and paddles, so we had to go down for shelter
somewhere, anywhere, and down at a terrific pace in the white water
we went. While hitched among the rocks the arrangement of our crew
had been altered, Pierre joining M'bo in the bows; this piece of
precaution was frustrated by our getting turned round; so our
position was what you might call precarious, until we got into
another whirlpool, when we persuaded Nature to start us right end
on. This was only a matter of minutes, whirlpools being plentiful,
and then M'bo and Pierre, provided with our surviving poles, stood
in the bows to fend us off rocks, as we shot towards them; while we
midship paddles sat, helping to steer, and when occasion arose,
which occasion did with lightning rapidity, to whack the whirlpools
with the flat of our paddles, to break their force.
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