"Lord love you, master," says he, "we'll be afloat in four hours."
CHAPTER XLIV.
IN WHICH MATTHEW PLAYS THE BEGGAR AND I THE FOOL.
My comrade had no sooner made promise that we should be afloat in four hours than he started about carrying out his design.
There was in that swamp that bordered the river an amazing quantity of great cane-reeds, some twenty feet in height and more, and of these he began to cut down with his sword such as were most proper to his purpose, bidding me do the like, and choose those of last year's growth, which were dry, light, and of good girth. Nothing loath, I waded into the morass (with a care that I trod on no water-serpent) until I was pretty well up to my middle in water, and there I laid about me with a will, until I had cut as many as I could carry, which I then took to a point where the water was deep and free from this growth, and laid them beside Matthew's store. In this way we proceeded until we had laid up a good stock of these canes.
"Now," says Matthew, eyeing them, "I judge we have enough; so do you go, master, and cut me one of those plaguey vines that gave us so much trouble this morning, while I set these reeds shipshape."
Perceiving his object, I went up into the wood and cut ten or a dozen fathoms of the lianes, which, as I say, are like any ship's tackle for toughness and soundness. While I was about this, Matthew sets the canes out, with the thick end of one overlapping about three parts of its length the thick end of another in such a manner that (all being served and tightly bound with the liana at both ends, and again in two or three places towards the middle) they made a huge bundle about a yard through at its largest girth, and four yards long, tapering off at each end like a fishing-float. This being done, and the lianes bound securely to Matthew's mind, he begs me to lend him a hand at cutting away certain of the canes in the middle with my knife, which was tough work indeed (for the canes were prodigious hard), and labor we might have spared ourselves had we bethought us to dispose the canes differently before we bound them up; but this did not occur to us till we were pretty nigh the end of our job.
However, having cut out of the middle a space about four feet long by two broad, and as much in depth, our business was done.
This was the boat which was to carry us up the river, and Matthew was not a little proud of it; though I was still in a taking for fear it should turn over when we set foot into it, and capsize us both into the water; but this it did not, but carried us as steadily as we could wish, and capital good we found it for such a boat as it was.