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Updated: May 3, 2025
According to accounts, which were eloquently verified by the silence of all who listened, the mud was hub deep everywhere, and in places the machines were quite out of sight, burrowing like moles. Some took to the tow-path along the canal, others to trolley lines and telegraph wires.
A span of mules will pretend to scare, whirl around, and jerk loose from the driver, and go "scooting" back down the tow-path in a manner indicating that nothing less than a stone wall would stop them; but, exactly in the nick of time to prevent the tow-line jerking them sidewise into the canal, they stop.
Wet or fine, calm or rough, 7 A.M. found the boy on the tow-path hallooing. No sooner were we asleep than the dewy morn was made hideous by the boy. Lying in bed with the blankets over our heads to deaden his cries, his fresh, lusty young voice pierced wood-work, blankets, sheets, everything. "Ya-ho, ahoy, ya-ho, aho, ahoy!" So he kept it up. What followed may easily be guessed.
We met many big keel-boats on their way up, using sails, mule power, and profanity a tedious and laborious business. A wire rope led from the foretopmast to the file of mules on the tow-path a hundred yards ahead, and by dint of much banging and swearing and urging, the detachment of drivers managed to get a speed of two or three miles an hour out of the mules against the stiff current.
I heard the captain swearing at some one, and saw him come ashore and start back along the tow-path toward me as if looking for something. He was a tall man whom I had seen pass at other times, and I was wondering whether he would speak to me or not, when I felt somebody's hand snatch at my collar, and a whip came down over my thin shirt with a cut which as I write I seem to feel yet.
When nearly overcome with fatigue, we saw from the tow-path an island in the river, and upon it a small house. Near the shore a man stood beside a canoe. We made signs to him to come to us, and he immediately sprang into his canoe and came over. We asked him to take us to the island, and he cheerfully granted our request, but said we must sit very still, or we would find ourselves in the water.
Now said this Hemti, when he saw the asses of Sekhti, that were pleasing in his eyes, "Oh that some good god would grant me to steal away the goods of Sekhti from him!" Now the Hemti's house was by the dyke of the tow-path, which was straitened, and not wide, as much as the width of a waist cloth: on the one side of it was the water, and on the other side of it grew his corn.
The terrifying shadow resolved itself into the great red-brown sail of a passing barge. I was lying close beside the tow-path of a canal. Just as the sun had risen over the trees and the mists were beginning to disperse and float upwards, another noise attracted my attention, which developed into a deep throbbing roar.
He had a week to do those eight bad miles in; and 2,000 lean horses, picking grass or brown leaves, while their riders threshed. "We will drag our pontoons by water, by the Elbe tow-path," thought Rutowski, "that will be easier;" and forthwith sets about preparing for it, secretly collecting boats at Pirna, steersmen, towing-men, bridge-tackle and what else will be necessary.
Never a peaceful night like this always moored by some quay or tow-path, with people passing and boys. Heavens! shall I ever forget those boys! A perfect murrain of them infests Holland; they seem to have nothing in the world to do but throw stones and mud at foreign yachts. 'They want a Herod, with some statesmanlike views on infanticide.
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