There was now no straining and grunting from the engines as there had been while we were battling against the current. You barely felt the throb and vibration, and it was only when you looked at the banks that you realised how swiftly the boat was rushing onwards. Perhaps we achieved seventeen knots. The shores slid by.
We were now shut in in a world of our own, whose boundaries were the curving banks and the reaches of the river as they opened out in front of us. One's senses were too much occupied, one's nerves too much on the stretch to be aware of anything beyond. We, the launch and the river were playing a gigantic gamble, in which the stakes on our part were perilously heavy. This continued to be for five minutes one's most prominent idea. It was very exciting, for we had nothing to do but await developments.
BERNARDO HÄHANSEN
Very soon, however, this feeling wore off. It seems that a very strong emotion cannot in the nature of things last long. Undoubtedly c'est le premier pas qui coûte. I looked round and saw the other two grinning.
At the pace we were then going our voyage was not likely to last more than four hours. This was a rough calculation allowing for the windings of the river that lay between us and Lake Argentino. We afterwards found that we ran the distance in three and a half hours, but they passed like a quarter of an hour. I do not suppose that any suicide club has ever invented a more acute form of excitement.
We rarely saw half a mile in front of us. At first the banks were low and the coarse grass upon them blew and shook against the pale blue of the sky-rim, but soon they began to give place to high and rocky slopes. Now and then one caught the glitter of a submerged rock. The wind and the current made the main channel difficult to follow with the eye, and round several corners we were positively feeling for it.
In places it seemed as if the launch were running into an impasse, and at such times it was necessary to send her along at her highest pressure in order to have the more command of the tiller. We would rush down upon such a place, and not until we were within forty yards would the river open out grey and shining, the helm be put over, and we find ourselves flying down another reach. We always kept to the rip, and by so doing attempted to follow the main channel.
About midway down the river came some more difficult places where the cliffs narrowed. One of these gave us a curious experience for the water seemed to absolutely go downhill, so steep was the angle of incline. Before reaching this spot we had come in sight of the top of the cliff that overhung it, and whose base, we could judge by the line of the channel, must be washed by the water. On turning a corner we came within full view of the place, and a strange view it was. The river appeared to race downhill and to end in a froth of yeasty foam at the foot of the towering black bluff. Look as we might, we could not see any way out of that tumbled smother of water; we knew there must be one, of course, but the question was in which direction did it lie. There was nothing for it but to pile on fuel to make the boat answer handily.