It would be some time before they could get it to stop, that would be one point in our favour, but they had already started firing. A bullet kicked water into the air a yard in front of me. I glanced over my shoulder, saw Munro some little way behind, the sergeant and three guards at the rail.
They all seemed to fire at once and Munro threw up his hands and disappeared. I took a deep breath and went under, clawing my way forward for all I was worth. When I surfaced I was into the first line of mangroves and in any case, the stern-wheeler had already faded into the mist.
I hung on to a root for a moment to get my breath, spitting out brackish, foul-tasting water. The general smell at that level was terrible and a snake glided by, reminding me unpleasantly of the hazards I was likely to meet if I stayed in the water too long. But anything was better than Machados.
I slid into the water again, struck out into the stream and allowed the current to take me along with it. I could already see the roofs of the huts above the trees for the mist at that point by close to the surface of the water.
I grounded in the mud below the pilings a few moments later and floundered out of the water, tripping over my leg chains at one point and falling on my face. When I struggled up I found an old man staring at me from the platform of one of the huts, a wretched creature who wore only a tattered cot-ton shirt.
When I got hold of the nearest canoe and shoved it towards the water, he gave vent to some sort of cry. I suppose I was taking an essential part of his livelihood or some other poor wretch's. God knows what misery my action was leaving behind, but that was life. Somehow, in spite of the awkward-ness of the chains I managed to get into the frail craft, picked up a paddle and pushed out into the current.
I didn't really think they would turn the stern-wheeler around and come down-river looking for me, but some son of search would obviously be mounted as soon as possible. It would be when they discovered a canoe had been taken from the village that the fun would start
It seemed essential that I got as much distance under me as possible. Whatever happened afterwards would have to be left to chance. Once into the Negro I would find plenty of riverside villages where people lived a primitive day-to-day life which didn't even recognise the existence'of such trappings of civilisa-tion as the police and the government. If I was lucky I'd find help and a little luck was something for which I was long over-due.
A couple of miles and I was obviously close to the confluence of the Negro. I was aware of the currents pulling, the surface turning over on itself. A mistake here and I was finished for I had no hope of keeping afloat for long in such conditions in my chained state.
I turned the canoe towards the left-hand side for I was at least fifty yards from the shore and it certainly looked as if I would be safer there. It seemed to be working and then, when I was a few yards from the mangrove trees, I seemed to slide down into a sudden turbulence.
It was like being seized in a giant hand, the canoe rocked from side to side, almost putting me over, I lost the paddle as I grabbed frantically at the sides to keep my balance and then we spun round twice and turned over.
My feet touched the bottom instantly, but the current was too strong for me to be able to stand. However, the canoe, bot-tom up, barged into me a moment later and I was able to fling my arms across the keel.
Things slowed down a little after that and we finally drifted into quiet water amongst the mangrove trees farmer along and grounded against a mudbank.
I righted the canoe and took stock of the situation. The mouth of the river was about a quarter of a mile away and I didn't fancy my chances in the canoe, with or without a paddle. It seemed obvious that the best, indeed the only thing to do, was to attempt to cut through/the mangroves on a diagonal course which would bring me out into the Negro down-river from the Seco.
I managed to get back into the canoe and pushed off, pulling myself along by the great roots of the trees until I came to a clump of bamboo where I managed to break myself off a length. From then on it wasn't too bad. Henley, the Thames on a Sun-day afternoon in summer. All I needed was a gramophone and a pretty girl. For a moment, I seemed to see Joanna Martin leaning back and laughing at me from under her parsol. But it was entirely the wrong kind of laughter. Some measure of the condition I was in by then, I suppose. I took a deep breath to brace myself up to what lay ahead and started to pole my way out of there.
THIRTEEN
Balsero
It took me four hours. Four hours of agony, tortured by mosquitoes and flies of every description, the iron bracelets rub-bing my wrists raw so that each push on the pole became an effort of will.
The trouble was that every so often I ran into areas where the mangroves seemed to come closer together, branches crowd-ing in overhead so that I couldn't see the sun which meant that I lost direction. And then there was the bamboo - gigantic walls of it that I could not possibly hope to penetrate. Each time, I had to probe for another way round or even retrace my route and try again from another direction.
When I finally saw daylight, so to speak, it was certainly more by accident than design. There was suddenly considerably fewer mangrove trees around although I suppose it must have been a gradual process. And then I heard the river.
I came out of the trees and edged into the Negro cautiously. It rolled along quietly enough and I had it to myself as far as I could see although as it was several hundred yards wide at that point, islands of various sizes scattered down the centre, it was impossible to be certain.
One thing I needed now above anything else. Rest, even sleep if possible. Some place where I could lie up for a while in safety for I could not continue in my present state.
It seemed to me then that one of those islands out there would be as good a place as any and I pushed out towards the centre of the river using the pole like a double-bladed paddle. It was slow work and I missed my first objective. By then there was hardly any strength left in me at all and each movement of my arms was physical agony.
It was the current which helped me at last, pushing me into ground on a strip of the purest whitest sand imaginable. No south sea island could have offered more. I fell out of the canoe and lay beside it in the shadows for a while, only moving in the end because I would obviously drown if I stayed there, so I got up off my knees and hauled that bloody boat clear of the water... then fell on my face again.
I don't know how long I lay there. It may have been an hour or just a few minutes. There seemed to be some sort of shouting going on near by, all part of the dream, or so it seemed. Perhaps I was still back in the Seco after jumping from the stern-wheeler? I opened my eyes and a child screamed.
There was all the terror in the whole world in that one cry. Enough to bring even me back to life. I got to my feet uncer-tainly and it started again and didn't stop.
There was a high spit of sand to my right, I scrambled to the top and found two children, a boy and a girl, huddled together in the shadows on the other side, an alligator nosing in towards them.
They could not retreat any farther for there was deep water behind them and the little girl, who was hardly more than a baby, was screaming helplessly. The boy advanced on the beast, howling at the top of his voice, which considering he looked about eight years of age was probably one of the bravest things I've seen in my life.
I started down the slope, forgetting my chains and fell head-long, rolling over twice and landing in about a foot of water which just about finished me off. I'm not really sure what hap-pened then. Someone was yelling at the top of his voice, me, I suppose. The alligator shied away from the children and darted at me, jaws gaping.
I grabbed up the chain between my wrists and brought it down like a flail across that ugly snout again and again, shout-ing at the children in Portuguese, telling them to get out of it I was aware of them scurrying by as I battered away and then the alligator slewed round and that great tail knocked my feet from under me.
I kicked at it frantically and then there was a shot and a ragged hole appeared in its snout. The sound it made was un-believable and it pushed off into deep water leaving a cloud of blood behind.
I lay on my back in the water for a while, then rolled over and got to my knees. A man was standing on the shore, small, muscular, brown-skinned. He might have passed for an Indian except for his hair which was cut European style. He wore a denim shirt and cotton loincloth and the children hung to his legs sobbing bitterly.
The rifle which was pointing in my direction was an old British Army Lee-Enfield. I didn't know what he was going to do with it, didn't even care. I held out my manacled wrists and started to laugh. I remember that and also that I was still laughing when I passed out.
It was raining when I returned to life and the sky was the colour of brass, stars already out in the far distances. I was lying be-side a flickering fire, there was the roof of a hut silhouetted against the sky beyond and yet I seemed to be moving and there was the gurgle of water beneath me.
I tried to sit up and saw that I was entirely naked except for my chains and my body was blotched here and there with great black swamp leeches.
A hand pushed me down again. "Please to be still, senhor."
My friend from the island crouched beside me puffing on a large cigar. When the end of it was really hot he touched it to one of the leeches which shriveled at once, releasing its hold.
"You are all right, senhor?"
"Just get rid of them," I said, my flesh crawling.
He lit another cigar and offered it to me politely then con-tinued his task. Beyond him in the shadows the two children watched, faces solemn in the firelight.
"Are the children all right?" I asked.
"Thanks to you, senhor. With children one can never turn the back, you have noticed this? I had put into that island to repair my steering oar. I turn my head for an instant and they are gone."
Steering oar?I frowned. "Where am I?"
"You are on my raft}senhor. I am Bartolomeo da Costa,balsero."
Balserosare the water gipsies of Brazil, drifting down the Amazon and Negro with their families on great balsa rafts up to a hundred feet long, the cheapest way of handling cargo on the river. Two thousand miles from the jungles of Peru down to Belem on occasion, taking a couple of months over the voyage.
It seemed as if that little bit of luck I had been seeking had finally come my way. The last leech gave up the ghost and as if at a, signal, a quiet, dark-haired woman wearing an old pilot coat against the evening chill emerged from the hut and crouched beside me holding an enamel mug.
It was black coffee and scalding hot. I don't think I have ever tasted anything more delicious. She produced an old blan-ket which she spread across me then suddenly seized my free hand and kissed it, bursting into tears. Then she got up and rushed away.
"My wife, Nula, senhor," Bartolomeo told me calmly. "You must excuse her, but the children - you understand? She wishes to thank you, but does not have the words."
I didn't know what to say. In any case, he motioned the chil-dren forward. "My son Flaveo and my daughter Christinas senhor."
The children bobbed their heads. I put a hand out to the boy, forgetting my chains and failed to reach him. "How old are you?"
"Seven years, senhor," he whispered.
I said to Bartolomeo, "Did you know that before I inter-vened, this one rushed on thejacare to save his sister?"
It was the one and only time during our short acquaintance that I saw Bartolomeo show any emotion on that normally placid face of his. "No, senhor." He put a hand on his son's shoulder. "He did not speak of this."
"He is a brave boy."
Bartolomeo capitulated completely, pulled the boy to him, kissed him soundly on both cheeks, kissed the girl and gave them both a push away from him. "Off with you - go help your mama with the meal." He got to his feet. "And now, senhor, we will see to these chains of yours."
He went into the hut and reappeared with a bundle under one arm which when unrolled, proved to be about as comprehensive a tool kit as I could have wished for.
"On a raft one must be prepared for all eventualities," he in-formed me.
"Are you sure you should be doing this?"
"You escaped from Machados?" he said.
"I was on my way there. Jumped overboard when we were on the Seco. They shot the man who was with me."
"A bad place. You are well out of it. How did they fasten these things?"
"Some sort of twist key."
"Then it should be simple enough to get them open."
It could have been worse, I suppose. The leg anklets took him almost an hoursbut he seemed to have the knack after that and had my hands free in twenty minutes. My wrists were rubbed raw. He eased them with some sort of grease or other which certainly got results for they stopped hurting almost immedi-ately, then he bandaged them with strips of cotton.
