Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/421

 river it was free, free, free-and the noise of its falls set my nerves quivering with a sympathetic excitement.

When my men had rejoined me we pushed on through the thick jungle and by dark we had suc- ceeded in passing out of hearing of the resonant thunder of the falls. But there were other rapids all along the river, and the music of the troubled waters was constantly in our cars. We camped on a sand bank by the river's side, and we went to bed supperless. We had paid tribute to the river of our last grain of rice, and Saleh, my head boatman, who had been selected for that post because he com- bined in a remarkable degrec a short temper and a long vocabulary, expressed himself on the subject of fate and of our situation with refreshing lati- tude.

The dawn broke grayly through a dense and drench- ing mist, and it found us very hungry and unhappy. We made an early start and scrambled and swarmed along the shelving river bank, through the bamboo brakes, the thorn thickets, and the tangled under- wood of that unspeakable forest, hour after hour, to an ever-increasing accompaniment of famine and fatigue. It was not until the afternoon sun was beginning to creep down the sky that we at length reached a place where it seemed possible again to make use of rafts with some prospect of success. We set to work in sullen silence, and an hour later we set off downstream, looking eagerly for a village as each bend was rounded, and accepting the recur-