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Updated: May 1, 2025
Then your skiff did not carry six tons of beef, bacon, biscuit, and other stores. It may also be safely asserted that the towing-path you walked on was not composed of sharp pointed rocks. Those were the conditions under which certain picked British soldiers, one of whom was an old friend of ours, lost sight of for a considerable time, were dragging their nuggar up a series of cataracts.
What with poling, and shoving, and pulling at the rope, the nuggar was floated once more at last, and on they went again, and by-and-by the river widened, and the current was not so strong, and so long as they kept the rope pretty taut the boat came along without any very great exertion. "Have a pipe out of my baccy-box, just to show there's no malice?" said Grady to Tarrant.
And as a proof of the actual loss incurred, I may observe that Colonel C. I. Taylor, in his book on "The Borer in Coorg, Munzerabad and Nuggar," mentions that an iron peg driven into the ground so that not a part of it protruded, was found, after the cleared jungle had been burned, to be no less than six inches out of the ground.
"A set of duffers, those chaps," said the sergeant in charge of the party, a young fellow named Barton, of good parentage, and Kavanagh's particular friend off duty. "A regular Nile reis, with his crew of four natives, would never have stuck the nuggar there." "I wish we had them Canadian vogajaws, sergeant," said Corporal Adams. "Ay, they are first-rate," replied the sergeant.
A year ago an escort of five or six soldiers used to accompany each nuggar either coming up or down. Even the steamers carried an escort of the same number. Now not one soldier either goes with one or the other. This has prevented all pillaging en route, for our people dare not do it now, not having the escort of soldiers."
At the word of command Attention! They close up, slope their arms properly, put away their pipes, and tramp on in perfect silence. But marching at ease was such a singularly inappropriate expression for men who were dragging a heavy nuggar up a cataract under a blazing sun that there was a general laugh, and even Tarrant relaxed into a grin.
A particularly stiff bit came just now. The rope strained as if it would snap; the bows of the nuggar were buried in foam, and the men hauling were forced to take the corporal's hint, and keep their breath for other purposes than conversation.
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