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When I turned round there was nothing to be seen. The water was as smooth as a lake and the others yonder kept shouting: 'Fish him out! fish him out! It was all very well to say that, but I cannot swim and still less dive. "At last the man from the dam came and two gentlemen with boathooks, but over a quarter of an hour had passed.
"It will be easier to find this channel near the river than it will when we are half-way across the lake;" and the captain sent two men with Morris in the sampan to search for it. The water was tolerably clear; and they went to the mouth of the outlet, sounding all the time with the boathooks. They found the channel at this point, and then followed it up beyond the steamer.
Standing breast-high in the waves, and surrounded at intervals by total darkness, they were yet able to pour an occasional well-directed volley into the hostile ranks. The Zealanders, however, did, not assail them with fire-arms alone. They transfixed some with their fatal harpoons; they dragged others from the path with boathooks; they beat out the brains of others with heavy flails.
Steamboats and shipping of all sorts lay there, tempted by the enormous sums of money offered by fugitives, and it is said that many who swam out to these vessels were thrust off with boathooks and drowned. About one o'clock in the afternoon the thinning remnant of a cloud of the black vapour appeared between the arches of Blackfriars Bridge.
There was an interval of shouting and confusion, the first engineer and the crew leaning over the sides fending off the boat with the stumps of the oars and with long boathooks. Some oars were shipped to the other side to take the place of the broken ones, and a score of hands tugging at them, the boat was at length pulled away out of danger.
From one to the other, with boathooks and paddle, we crept past the outer wings of their balanced rudders till we reached the landing place. On the rocks at the landing a bevy of women were washing, beating their hardy garments with wooden flappers against the stones; but they ceased their work as the foreign devil, in his uncouth garb, stepped ashore in their midst.
It was from the sides, by means of long boathooks or props thrust against the bed of the stream, that the jangada was kept in the current, and had its direction altered when going astray. By this means they could range alongside either bank, if they wished for any reason to come to a halt.
To Gadabout and her crew, add anchors, chains and ropes, small boats, poles and sweeps, parallel rulers, dividers and charts, anchor-lights, lanterns and side-lights, compasses, barometers and megaphones, fenders, grapnels and boathooks until the landlubberly owners are almost frightened back to solid land; and then all is ready for a houseboat cruise.
The light came on nearer and nearer, and at last they could dimly make out the half-hoisted sails of a small fishing lugger, which was run cleverly enough close alongside, her occupants holding on by boathooks. "Mind what you are doing there," cried the lieutenant sharply; "jump aboard, my man." "All right, captain."
"Clingman and Wales, jump on the raft with the boathooks, and crowd the stuff over to the starboard side," said the captain when he had found the place he wanted. He stopped the boat, and then went ahead, to enable the men to get upon the mass, after they had thrown a couple of boards upon it to stand on.
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