Читать книгу A Half Century Among the Siamese and the Lāo: An Autobiography онлайн

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After we had waited two days and nights for help from the village above, on the third night the spirits came to our rescue. Either with their ears or in their imaginations, our crew heard strange noises in the rocks and trees about them, which they interpreted as a warning from the spirits to be gone. Next morning, after consultation together, they made another desperate effort, and got the boats off. It was still several days before we met the men that came down in response to the prince’s order. But some of the worst rapids were yet before us. We could hardly have got through without their aid.

The efforts of a single crew, it must be remembered, are utterly inadequate to bring a boat up through any of these rapids. Only by combining two or three crews can the boats be brought up one by one. Some of the men are on the bank, tugging at the tow-rope while they clamber over rocks and struggle through bushes. Some are on board, bending to their poles. Others are up to their waists in the rushing water, by main force fending off the boat from being dashed against the rocks. On one occasion I myself had made the passage in the first boat, which then was left moored in quieter waters. The crew went back to bring up the second boat, in which were my wife and children. With anxious eyes I was watching the struggle; when, suddenly, in the fiercest rush of the current, the men lost control of her. Boat and passengers were drifting with full force straight against a wall of solid rock on the opposite bank. It seemed as if nothing could save them. But one of the fleetest boatmen, with rope in hand, swam to a rock in midstream, and took a turn of the rope about it, just in time to prevent what would have been a tragedy.