Page:Ballinger Price--Fortune of the Indies.djvu/218

 stream. For her size she was very light, with her bamboo deckhouse; she drifted buoyantly, nosing along beside the dark banks.

"We can't see how this sail proposition works now," Mark said. "We'll get it up, if we can, with the first wink of daylight. If we keep poling and yulowing, we'll get on fairly fast."

So pole and yulow they did, till their weary arms could move no longer, and a flat sun rose through the mist across rice-paddies. They let her drift then, and Mark steered while Alan routed out a great bag of rice and the boat-brazier.

"I don't exactly relish boiling it in river-water," he said, "but seeing that we'll have to live on this stuff for dear knows how long, we might just as well begin to get used to it." The rice was edible and welcome, despite an entire absence of salt and the presence of a curious muddy taste. They ate sitting cross-legged on deck, Mark with his arm hooked over the steering-oar and an eye for the freaks of the winding stream. The wind was coming now, right astern, and the boys got up the sail, which they thought a weirdly contrived affair.