The difficulties we soon got into, through the off-settings and point-currents of the stream, made the likelihood of our being drowned, alone,—­to say nothing of our being retaken—­as broad and plain as the sun at noonday to all of us.  But, we all worked hard at managing the rafts, under the direction of the seamen (of our own skill, I think we never could have prevented them from oversetting), and we also worked hard at making good the defects in their first hasty construction—­which the water soon found out.  While we humbly resigned ourselves to going down, if it was the will of Our Father that was in Heaven, we humbly made up our minds, that we would all do the best that was in us.

And so we held on, gliding with the stream.  It drove us to this bank, and it drove us to that bank, and it turned us, and whirled us; but yet it carried us on.  Sometimes much too slowly; sometimes much too fast, but yet it carried us on.

My little deaf and dumb boy slumbered a good deal now, and that was the case with all the children.  They caused very little trouble to any one.  They seemed, in my eyes, to get more like one another, not only in quiet manner, but in the face, too.  The motion of the raft was usually so much the same, the scene was usually so much the same, the sound of the soft wash and ripple of the water was usually so much the same, that they were made drowsy, as they might have been by the constant playing of one tune.  Even on the grown people, who worked hard and felt anxiety, the same things produced something of the same effect.  Every day was so like the other, that I soon lost count of the days, myself, and had to ask Miss Maryon, for instance, whether this was the third or fourth?  Miss Maryon had a pocket-book and pencil, and she kept the log; that is to say, she entered up a clear little journal of the time, and of the distances our seamen thought we had made, each night.

So, as I say, we kept afloat and glided on.  All day long, and every day, the water, and the woods, and sky; all day long, and every day, the constant watching of both sides of the river, and far ahead at every bold turn and sweep it made, for any signs of Pirate-boats, or Pirate-dwellings.  So, as I say, we kept afloat and glided on.  The days melting themselves together to that degree, that I could hardly believe my ears when I asked “How many now, Miss?” and she answered “Seven.”

To be sure, poor Mr. Pordage had, by about now, got his Diplomatic coat into such a state as never was seen.  What with the mud of the river, what with the water of the river, what with the sun, and the dews, and the tearing boughs, and the thickets, it hung about him in discoloured shreds like a mop.  The sun had touched him a bit.  He had taken to always polishing one particular button, which just held on to his left wrist, and to always calling for stationery.  I suppose that man called for pens, ink, and paper, tape, and scaling-wax, upwards of one thousand times in four-and-twenty hours.  He had an idea that we should never get out of that river unless we were written out of it in a formal Memorandum; and the more we laboured at navigating the rafts, the more he ordered us not to touch them at our peril, and the more he sat and roared for stationery.