"Breakfast had better wait till we get into deeper water," replied Reeves. "Heave up the anchor, Rags; I'll pole her along."
Very slowly the boat glided through the shallow water, the correspondent sounding with the oar. For quite a hundred yards the depth was uniform, then, with a suddenness that almost caused Reeves to lose his balance, the oar clipped into deeper water.
"Let go the anchor again!" he shouted. "There are at least twelve feet here. We must have struck the channel."
After breakfast the voyage was resumed; but although the halyards had been repaired and freshly rove, and the wind was fair, Reeves would not hoist the sail for fear of running hard aground again. An hour's steady pull brought them to the lower end of the lake, whence the river, now nearly a quarter of a mile in breadth, flowed swiftly in a south-westerly direction.
During the next three days the course lay betwixt sandbanks, with the apparently interminable desert stretching for miles on either hand. Two more cataracts were encountered. The first was shot with little difficulty, but the second, when viewed from upstream, presented a line of broken water extending from bank to bank, with rocks studded thickly across the bed.
So formidable was the aspect that Reeves ran the boat ashore, and, having secured her, the three travellers walked downstream to take stock of the-latest difficulty. Here they found that, although powerful, the rapid kept an almost clear course close to the bank.
"Can we shoot it?" asked Gerald.
"I shouldn't care to try it," replied Reeves. "This little channel is not wide enough to allow any margin for sheering about. We must veer the boat through it."
Accordingly the cable was made fast to the foremost thwart and led ashore over the gunwale at a distance of about three feet from the stem. The boat was pushed off into the stream, and the three members of her crew, standing on the bank, held the rope.
Caught by the current, the craft began to drift downstream till the cable became taut. There she lay, held as steady as a rock, with the water hissing past her like a mill race.