SHOOTING THE RATAMA
At daybreak we left the Ysipuri barraca and emptying our rifles in
salute to the Englishman's Winchester, we started on for the next
rapids, the greatest rapids on the river--the Ratama.
Two miles above the Ratama the walls of the gorge began to close in
steep cliffs. Here and there shrubs clung on little niches, while from
the high edges long vines hung down and were whipped taut in the swift,
glassy current below. The air began to cool in the deep shadows, and
there was a damp chill in it like the breath from a cavern. The Leccos
were not chattering now, for this place may on any trip prove to be
serious, and the silence of the smooth drifting was only broken by an
occasional kingfisher, which clattered by like a flying watchman's
rattle.
Slowly a dull roaring, echoing from the distance, steadily obtruded
itself; the current was still glassy, but as it moved it snapped against
the walls of the cañon in angry ripples. Every Lecco in the crew was
poised, with his paddle, as tense as a strung bow. Now we knew who was
the captain of the crew. It was the forward Lecco on the right; he was
the only one who had anything to say. It was no childish joking now;
there were commands. Occasionally he grunted his order, and the paddles
dipped as they held the raft true, bow on, in the middle of the current.
With a grand sweep we swung round a bend between the walls of rock and
there far ahead the white waves of the Ratama were snapping like great
fangs against the dusk of the cañon, while above them hung a heavy mist
that blurred the outlines of the gorge beyond.
The callapo increased its speed; the Ratama seemed to be springing
toward us with each leaping wave; the roaring water deepened, and the
voices were drowned. The Lecco captain dipped his paddle, and the rest
followed the signal, and gently the callapo was held true, with the
three upturned snouts headed straight for the foaming center. The cliffs
had closed in like the walls of a corridor, and they flew past like the
flickering film of a moving-picture; the spray from the trailing vines
was whipped in our faces and floated upward to form rainbows in the
slanting sunlight high overhead. Then for a second we seemed to pause on
the edge of a long slide of polished water, the edge of the cataract.
The Leccos crouched for the shock, and we could fairly feel their toes
gripping the submerged callapo logs, while their paddles were poised
above their heads. Then came the brief coast down the smooth water and
the plunge into the great wave that loomed above our heads, only to
break with a drenching roar over us and the lashed freight. The Leccos
dropped on their knees, gripping a hold as best they might; their eyes
glittered with excitement, and I could see their wide-open mouths in a
yell of wild joy, though every sound was drowned in the crash and roar
of waters. The paddles swung in powerful circles, and at each dip the
paddlers went out of sight, head and shoulders in the smother of foam.
The water was above my waist, and somewhere below the surface I was
hanging on to the cargo lashings, with my feet braced against the logs.
Under the boiling smother of foam I could feel the callapo writhe and
twist in the strain; a keg broke loose, and a Lecco lost his paddle in
recovering it. His paddle was of no consequence, for he could whittle
another, and he fondly believed the keg held the beloved
alcohol--cañassa--though he was wrong, for it held nothing but pickled
beef, and worthless, as I later found.
Sometimes a Lecco's shoulder would rise above the boiling smother, with
the brown muscles playing in hard knots; sometimes we would slew side on
to the current, and no power could hold us straight until a bursting
wave would throw us back; sometimes for an instant the dripping snouts
of the callapo would be flung high in the air and fall back with a crash
that made itself heard above the roar, and the raft would quiver and
strain with the impact. One saw nothing; we might have been standing
still. There was nothing but the lashing sting of the whirling spray and
the thunder of the cataract. Then, in an instant, the roar and the
tumult were behind, the waves calmed, and the callapo shot out into the
calmer waters below, where the whirlpools and eddies shifted and coiled.
Vortices into which one might lower a barrel without wetting it whirled
lazily past within paddle-reach, and sometimes one would suddenly form
ahead and the Leccos would watch them intently as to their possible
direction, and then paddle to shift our course. These they can generally
avoid. It is when one forms or suddenly comes up from underneath that
there is danger. A few did catch us this way and the Leccos would stand
with braced feet, reading by the straining logs the possible strength of
the vortex, and the callapo would grind and slowly sink, until by sheer
mass it broke the force of the whirl. Often we would go down by the
stern until the after Leccos kept only their heads above water, and even
we, farther forward, would be submerged up to our shoulders. There was
nothing to do but wait until the vortex broke of itself.
In the Ratama the roar and excitement drowned any emotion, but this was
slowly waiting in uncertainty and speculating on how far one could
really swim before being drawn under like a chip. Not far, that was
certain, and the Leccos watched this shifting, coiling passage in a
silent gravity that they had shown nowhere else on the river. It is the
breaking up of the logs and cargo that make the danger, at least to the
Lecco--greater than the power of the river itself--and a white man would
have no chance.
From the Ratama the river and the country back of it opened out, and the
last of the eastern Andean foot-hills were almost passed. A few more
rapids were left--the Nube, the Incaguarra, the Beyo, and the Bala--but
after the Ratama they dwindled to harmless riffles. The Beyo Cañons
resound with a deafening roar, but it is from the thousands of macaws
that have their nests in the soft sandstone cliffs, and it is their
clatter that carries for miles in the soft evening airs.
Presently the chief of the Lecco crew chattered with the others. They
argued each according to his recollection, for down somewhere on this
stretch of the river--it was the River Kaka now since being joined by
the River Tipuani and the Coroico River, mountain torrents both--there
was an old camp that was our objective. The jungle had long since wiped
out every trace and there was nothing to depend upon but the memory of
the Leccos. As a matter of fact, there probably is nothing that could be
more reliable; it is the one thing they know, is this river, and every
turn, every eddy, every tree or drooping vine along the banks is marked
down in their primitive minds with the vividness of painted signs. The
callapos strung out each in the wake of the other drifting around a long
turn of smooth, swift water. The chief grunted, the crew clattered and
grunted back in obvious affirmation. The paddles dipped, and from the
following callapos came a yell as they, too, began to splash and pry
their way out of the current. One after the other they swung round and
bumped into shallow water on the heavy gravel of a playa; beyond rose a
steep bank overgrown with masses of creeper and jungle.
The Leccos chopped a way in with their machetes, and with a grunt a
Lecco announced a find. There was a tent peg, a broken kettle, a broken
bottle neck, and a bit of rope. It was the proof of the site of the
previous camp in its exact location. Five minutes later the lashings
were off the freight and a splashing line of Indians and Cholos were
bringing the freight ashore. Here was to be established the permanent
camp; the long journey from the coast had reached its goal.
The Leccos and the Cholo workmen were still splashing through the muddy
shallows from the grounded callapos packing the freight for the camp
when Agamemnon announced himself as cook. Before this moment he had idly
occupied himself as valet, butler, laundress--at least since leaving La
Paz--faithful adviser, major domo, village gossip, and occasionally the
village drunkard. And now when he announced himself as cook no husk of
humility could conceal the fact that he regarded all other cook
possibilities in that camp on the Rio Kaka with a scornful contempt.
Later it developed that at this particular time his sole knowledge of
cooking was confined to an ability to make guava jelly, an
accomplishment which, in view of the fact that we were somewhere around
five hundred miles by trail and raft from civilization, was of no
service at the moment.
The difficulty over the cook situation had arisen suddenly in the first
hour of making camp. Back in Mapiri there was a certain fat little Cholo
who had sewed a strip of red flannel down his trouser legs in sign of
the fact that under some circumstances he was the Mapiri police force;
what these circumstances might be never developed for during our long
wait he was busy at nothing more official than taking care of the
sugar-cane distillery that belonged to the intendente. Before that,
rumor had it, he had taught school in Guanai down the river with a row
of empty cañassa bottles by means of which he illustrated addition and
subtraction. This was as far as the school went; with that course
completed, it issued its diploma. This little Cholo urged himself as
cook and, as we needed a cook, he was added. As it turned out he was
probably the only man in Bolivia who could _not_ cook, or at any rate
the only one who had never passed the stage of being able to boil water.
When the callapos swung in to the playa and grounded on the shallow
beach the cook started to get his first meal. The water was brought to a
boil successfully in a large kettle between two logs. Presently it began
to exude half-cooked rice and cheerfully the fat Cholo added another
kettle to hold the overflow. Presently, also, both kettles began to
exude half-cooked rice and two more kettles were added to the logs. Once
again the pots seethed and frothed and again came forth the overflow of
half-cooked rice, still swelling, from four interminable geysers.
Dully the Cholo beat at it with an iron spoon and the Leccos grinned at
him as they filled their little pots with the overflow. Heaven alone
knows how much rice the cook started with, but in the end half the fire
was drowned out, every Lecco had his little pot of half raw rice, a row
of big jungle leaves had each their little mound of rice alongside the
fire log, and the hot tropic air was drifting sluggishly with the odor
of burnt rice. And every pot and kettle in camp held remnants of the
salvage. Therefore, it was that Agamemnon became cook.