“Ahoy, my man!”
No answer. Had he been swept off? Or did he get back into the boat?
Perhaps he was drowned already.
But all of a sudden Daniel’s heart trembled with joy and hope. He had
just made out, a few hundred yards below, a red light, indicating a
vessel at anchor. All his efforts were directed towards that point.
He was carried thither with an almost bewildering rapidity. He nearly
touched it; and then, with incredible presence of mind, and great
precision, at the moment when the current drove him close up to the
anchor-chain, he seized it. He held on to it; and, having recovered his
breath, he uttered three times in succession, with all the strength of
his lungs, so sharp a cry, that it was heard above the fierce roar of
the river,--
“Help, help, help!”
From the ship came a call, “Hold on!” proving to him that his appeal had
been heard, and that help was at hand.
Too late! An eddy in the terrible current seized him, and, with
irresistible violence, tore the chain, slippery with mud, out of his
stiffened hands. Rolled over by the waters, he was rudely thrown against
the side of the vessel, went under, and was carried off.
When he rose to the surface, the red light was far above him, and below
no other light was in sight. No human help was henceforth within reach.
Daniel could now count only upon himself in trying to make one of the
banks. Although he could not measure the distance, which might be very
great, the task did not seem to him beyond his strength, if he had only
been naked. But his clothes encumbered him terribly; and the water which
they soaked up made them, of course, every moment more oppressive.
“I shall be drowned, most assuredly,” he thought, “if I cannot get rid
of my clothes.”
Excellent swimmer as he was, the task was no easy one. Still he
accomplished it. After prodigious efforts of strength and skill, he got
rid of his shoes; and then he cried out, as if in defiance of the blind
element against which he was struggling,--
“I shall pull through! I shall see Henrietta again!”
But it had cost him an enormous amount of time to undress; and how could
he calculate the distance which this current had taken him down--one of
the swiftest in the world? As he tried to recall all he knew about it,
he remembered having noticed that, a mile below Saigon, the river was
as wide as a branch of the sea. According to his calculation, he must be
near that spot now.
“Never mind,” he said to himself, “I mean to get out of this.”
Not knowing to which bank he was nearest, he had resolved, almost
instinctively, to swim towards the right bank, on which Saigon stands.
He was thus swimming for about half an hour, and began already to feel
his muscles stiffening, and his joints losing their elasticity, while
his breathing became oppressed, and his extremities were chilled, when
he noticed from the wash of the water that he was near the shore. Soon
he felt the ground under his feet; but, the moment he touched it, he
sank up to his waist into the viscous and tenacious slime, which makes
all the Cochin China rivers so peculiarly dangerous.
There was the land, no doubt, and only the darkness prevented his seeing
it; and yet his situation was more desperate than ever. His legs were
caught as in a vice; the muddy water was boiling nearly up to his lips;
and, at every effort to extricate himself, he sank deeper in, a little
at a time, but always a little more. His presence of mind now began to
leave him, as well as his strength; and his thoughts became confused,
when he touched, instinctively feeling for a hold, the root of a
mangrove.
That root might be the saving of his life. First he tried its strength;
then, finding it sufficiently solid, he hoisted himself up by it,
gently, but with the frenzied energy of a drowning man; then, creeping
cautiously on the treacherous mud, he finally succeeded in reaching firm
ground, and fell down exhausted.
He was saved from drowning; but what was to become of him, naked,
exhausted, chilled as he was, and lost in this dark night in a strange
and deserted country? After a moment, however, he rose, and tried to get
on; but at every step he was held back on all sides by lianes and cactus
thorns.
“Well,” he said, “I must stay here till day breaks.”
The rest of the night he spent in walking up and down, and beating his
chest, in order to keep out the terrible chills which penetrated to the
very marrow of his bones. The first light of dawn showed him how he was
imprisoned within an apparently impenetrable thicket, out of which, it
seemed, he could never find his way. He did find it, however, and after
a walk of four hours, he reached Saigon.
Some sailors of a merchant-ship, whom he met, lent him a few clothes,
and carried him on board “The Conquest,” where he arrived more dead than
alive.
“Where do you come from, great God! in such a state?” exclaimed his
comrades when they saw him.
“What has happened to you?”
And, when he had told them all he had gone through since they parted,
they said,--
“Certainly, my dear Champcey, you are a lucky fellow. This is the second
accident from which you escape as by a miracle. Mind the third!”
“Mind the third!” that was exactly what Daniel thought.
For, in the midst of all the frightful sufferings he had undergone
during the past night, he had reflected deeply. That block which had
fallen on his head, no one knew whence; this boat sinking suddenly, and
without apparent cause--were they the work of chance alone?
The awkwardness of the boatman who had so unexpectedly turned up to
offer him his services had filled his mind with strange doubts. This
man, a wretched sailor, might be a first-class swimmer; and, having
taken all his measures before upsetting the boat, he might easily have
reached land after the accident.
“This boatman,” Daniel thought, “evidently wanted me to perish. Why, and
what purpose? Evidently not for his sake. But who is interested in my
death? Sarah Brandon? No, that cannot be!”
What was still less likely was, that a wretch in Sarah Brandon’s pay
should have found his way on board “The Conquest,” and should then have
been precisely at the right moment at the wharf, the first time Daniel
went on shore. Still his suspicions troubled him to such a degree, that
he determined to make every effort to solve the mystery.
To begin, he asked for a list of all the men who had been allowed to
go on shore the night before. He learned in reply, that only the crews
of the different boats had been at Saigon, but that all the emigrants
having been allowed to land, several of these men had also gone on
shore. With this information, and in spite of his great weakness, Daniel
went to the chief of police at Saigon, and asked him for an officer.
With this agent he went to the wharf, to the spot where the boat of
“The Conquest” had been lying the night before, and asked him to make
inquiries there as to any boatman that might have disappeared during the
night.
None of the boatmen was missing; but they brought Daniel a poor Annamite
fellow, who had been wandering about the river-bank ever since early
morning, tearing his hair, and crying that he had been robbed; that
they had stolen his boat. Daniel had been unable the night before to
distinguish the form or the dress of the man whose services he had
accepted; but he had heard his voice, and he recalled the peculiar
intonation so perfectly, that he would have recognized it among
thousands. Besides, this poor devil did not know a word of French (more
than ten persons bore witness to it); and born on the river, and having
always lived there, he was an excellent sailor. Finally, it was very
clear, that, if this man had committed the crime, he would have been
careful not to claim his boat.
What could Daniel conclude from this summary inquiry?
“There is no doubt about it,” he thought. “I was to be murdered.”