At last, when all hope in this quarter was lost, they hewed trees, and fastened them together as well as they could, and made in this way a raft. When they had finished it, they put on their baggage, and seated themselves upon it, and suffered it to float down the stream. But even this frail bark required a steersman acquainted with navigation; but they had none such. In no long time, it struck against a sunken log, and broke to pieces. The people and their baggage were cast into the river. Great, however, as was the danger, no one was lost. Madame Godin sunk twice to the bottom, but was at last rescued by her brothers.
Wet through and through, exhausted, and half dead with fright, they at last all gained the shore. But only imagine their lamentable, almost desperate, condition! All their supplies lost; to make another raft impossible; even their stock of provisions gone! And where were they when all these difficulties overwhelmed them? In a horrid wilderness, so thick grown up with trees and bushes, that one could make a passage through it no other way than by axe and knife; inhabited only by fiercest tigers, and by the most formidable of serpents,—the rattlesnake. Moreover, they were without tools, without weapons! Could their situation be more deplorable?
CHAPTER X.
MADAME GODIN'S VOYAGE CONTINUED.
The unfortunate travellers had now but the choice of two desperate expedients,—either to wait where they were the termination of their wretched existence, or try the almost impossible task of penetrating along the banks of the river, through the unbroken forest, till they might reach Andoas. They chose the latter, but first made their way back to their lately forsaken hut to take what little provisions they had there left. Having accomplished this, they set out on their most painful and dangerous journey. They observed, when they followed the shore of the river, that its windings lengthened their way. To avoid this, they endeavored, without leaving the course of the river, to keep a straight course. By this means, they lost themselves in the entangled forest; and every exertion to find their way was ineffectual. Their clothes were torn to shreds, and hung dangling from their limbs; their bodies were sadly wounded by thorns and briers; and, as their scanty provision of food was almost gone, nothing seemed left to them but to sustain their wretched existence with wild fruit, seeds and buds of the palm-trees.
At last, they sank under their unremitted labor. Wearied with the hardships of such travel, torn and bleeding in every part of their bodies, and distracted with hunger, terror, and apprehensions, they lost the small remnant of their energy, and could do no more. They sat down, and had no power to rise again. In three or four days, one after another died at this stage of their journey. Madame Godin lay for the space of twenty-four hours by the side of her exhausted and helpless brothers and companions: she felt herself benumbed, stupefied, senseless, yet at the same time tormented by burning thirst. At last, Providence, on whom she relied, gave her courage and strength to rouse herself and seek for a rescue, which was in store for her, though she knew not where to look for it.
Around lay the dead bodies of her brothers and her other companions,—a sight which at another time would have broken her heart. She was almost naked. The scanty remnants of her clothing were so torn by the thorns as to be almost useless. She cut the shoes from her dead brothers' feet, bound the soles under her own, and plunged again into the thicket in search of something to allay her raging hunger and thirst. Terror at seeing herself so left alone in such a fearful wilderness, deserted by all the world, and apprehension of a dreadful death constantly hovering before her eyes, made such an impression upon her, that her hair turned gray.
It was not till the second day after she had resumed her wandering that she found water, and, a little while after, some wild fruit, and a few eggs of birds. But her throat was so contracted by long fasting, that she could hardly swallow. These served to keep life in her frame.