“Worse,” declared Mr. Thorne. “They seem to go blind mad at the smell of flesh, and their jaws are so powerful and their teeth so sharp they can bite a piece out of a plank. A man would be torn to bits--eaten alive--if he went in there.”
“Jiminy, I’d hate to tumble overboard!” exclaimed Tom.
“That’s the odd thing about them,” remarked Mr. Thorne as they started back towards the boat. “They won’t touch a man if he has clothes on--apparently do not recognize flesh if covered by garments. In some parts of the rivers they are harmless--never touch people--and the natives bathe freely.”
“Well, I’m not taking any chances,” declared Tom. “I’ll go without a bath for a while.”
Embarking once more, the boat was paddled upstream and at the foot of the roaring, rushing falls, which the boys now saw were really a series of steep rapids, dashing and foaming over the jagged black rocks, the craft was run alongside a smooth ledge.
“All out!” cried Mr. Thorne, leaping ashore.
Filled with interest to discover how the Indians would get the heavy boat through that tumbling seething mass of water to the river level, twenty feet above, the boys scrambled up over the rocks and watched every move of Colcord and his men.
“This isn’t a bad spot,” commented the explorer. “They’ll get through without discharging. But, in many places, everything has to be taken from the boat and portaged for a mile or more around the rapids. Sometimes a score of such portages must be made in order to travel a dozen miles upstream, so you can understand how tedious and slow traveling in the interior is.”
“This looks bad enough to suit me,” declared Tom. “I should think the boats would get smashed all to bits.”
“They’re built for the purpose,” replied Mr. Thorne. “Tough native wood and with spoon-shaped bottoms, so they slide off a rock in any direction.” Some of the Indians had now uncoiled a long light rope and were moving upstream, jumping and scrambling from rock to rock, at times plunging into the swirling water up to their armpits or even swimming through the racing current, until at last they gained a precarious foothold upon a projecting ledge in midstream, well above the falls. In the meantime, others had attached a second line to the stern of the boat and stood waiting for orders close to the water’s edge, while the bowman and Colcord braced themselves in bow and stern, grasping their immense paddles.