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"A child can't go through the forest all alone. He'll perish. We must build a raft, Vasudeva, to get over the water." "We will build a raft," said Vasudeva, "to get our boat back, which the boy has taken away. But him, you shall let run along, my friend, he is no child any more, he knows how to get around. He's looking for the path to the city, and he is right, don't forget that.
Until noon they continued their exertions not without success; they were not three miles from the land; but, as the sun passed the meridian a change took place; the breeze blew strong; the swell of the sea rose rapidly; and the raft was often so deeply immersed in the waves as to alarm them for the safety of those upon her.
The sheik of the village and several of the Arabs were hippopotami hunters by profession; these fellows could swim like otters, and, despite the crocodiles, they seemed as much at home in the water as on land. We prepared an impromptu raft.
Both were carried by the current clear of the raft, which, by a great error of judgment, as it now appeared, on the part of the builders, had only been made to protect the floating portion of the bridge. The 'Fortune' came first, staggering inside the raft, and then lurching clumsily against the dyke, and grounding near Kalloo, without touching the bridge.
"Now, Pomp," I said, after we had each lain down and had a good hearty drink of clear water, "the way to get home is to make a raft and float down the river." "Don't want raft want um boat," he said. "Do you know what a raft is?" I said. "No, Mass' George." I explained to him, and he shook his head. "'Gator come and pick Pomp and Mass' George off." "We must make it so big that they could not."
But, preserving my gravity, I unhesitatingly replied that gratitude alone for the important service rendered us would have sufficed to prevent any such attempt as that hinted at, and that I therefore cheerfully entered upon the required undertaking. This matter satisfactorily settled, I retired below with the young officer who had had charge of the boat which effected our removal from the raft.
The dingy in which they had hoped to escape had been shot to pieces, and they dared not try to get their raft overboard, for the growing light would have revealed their movements, and they would have been a target for every gunner and rifleman within range. So they could only lie flat on deck and wait for something to happen.
He rose and stood forth mute in spirit as in speech; humbled, yet content, in the consciousness that having miserably failed first to save himself and then to rue himself back to destruction, the hurricane had been his deliverer. It had spared his supplies, his ammunition, his weapons, only hiding them deeper under the dune sands; but scarce a vestige of his camp remained and of his raft nothing.
The two armies were drawn up on the two banks, and the country people of the neighborhood were present to watch one of the most memorable interviews known to history. When they reached the raft, the two sovereigns, who had just been fighting so bitterly, and had sent so many thousand men to death, fell into each other's arms with emotion.
I went to the eyot for a boat, and my difficulties began. The crowd of boats lashed to each other in strings ready for the hirer disconcerted me. There were so many I could not choose; the whole together looked like a broad raft. Others were hauled on the shore.
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