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Updated: July 29, 2025
“Not so much danger as there would be of the canoe upsetting if I were alone in it, for I should be powerless even to keep her straight, and she would go broadside on to a rock and be dashed to pieces.” “The señor is right, Hurka,” Pita said gravely; “we will do as he wishes. But the ropes must be long, so that if we are flung off the raft there will be no sudden pull on the canoe.
You had better throw them into the next clump of bushes you come to; we can get another pair at the mission.” In the course of the day they crossed two other streams, and at each of them took measures as before to throw the Indians off their track. They kept on till nightfall, and then Stephen and Pita lay down, Hurka saying that he would watch until midnight.
“To-morrow we shall be in the full force of the rapids, señor,” Hurka said. “I should advise you to lay yourself down in the bottom of the canoe and to pass the day in sleep. It will be safer so should there be an accident, for, with your weight at the bottom, the canoe will be more likely to keep upright than it otherwise would.
“It is very awkward, Hurka, but I should think that you and Pita can contrive some plan for getting off.” The little Indian nodded. “We can manage that,” he said. “We have only been waiting until we were sure that you were strong enough to travel. I know that even now you could not go far, but once in the forest, we shall be able to outwit them and to travel slowly.
Without a word Stephen dropped on to the ground, and almost instantaneously went off to sleep. When he awoke it was broad daylight. Hurka was beside him. “We must be moving now, señor,” he said. “Pita has been away for half an hour, and has just signalled to me to join him.” Stephen rose to his feet heavily.
While they had been talking they had floated quietly down the stream, and Pita said that they were now but a few miles from the next village, and had better tie up until darkness came on. “Have you any desire for gold, señor?” Hurka asked, after they had secured the canoe to an overhanging branch, and the two Indians had rolled and lighted their cigarettes. “Not particularly, Hurka.
By this time Stephen had come to appreciate the good qualities of Hurka, whose unfailingly good temper and gaiety had lightened the journey, and whose humorous stories of his adventures, and of the obstinacy and folly of his employers, raised a smile even on the impassive face of Pita.
“We might do that,” Hurka replied, “but a touch from any of these logs would sink her in a moment; and besides, we should be sorry to lose the raft, for we have no skins to make floats, and the rushes of which we constructed it only grow in the quiet waters of the upper river. We might take to the canoe as a last resource, but we should be very loth to do it.”
Hurka was so short that he was almost a dwarf, and, save for his face, he might have been taken for a boy of fourteen. He possessed none of Pita’s gravity, but was soon laughing and chatting with the Indian’s wife and children, and was evidently a special favourite with them. His face was bright and intelligent.
A mile further another stream fell into that which they were following, and they turned up this and walked until they came to a bough some eight feet above the water. Pita sprung up and hauled himself on to it, then he leaned over and stretched his hands down to Stephen, and, with a strength the latter had hardly given him credit for, hauled him up beside him, and then similarly aided Hurka.
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