severing hatchet-stroke on the
hauling-rope. For, of course, the ascending power came from a line of
Dongolese, black fellows, with backs and muscles to delight a
prize-fighter, who, by sheer strength of body, would drag the boat,
cargo and all (or sometimes lightened of her cargo by the
land-carriers), up, up, with grunting and heaving, against the down-rush
of the river.

And woe to the boat if her hatchet-man fails to cut the rope at the very
second of danger! So long as the craft can live his arm must stay
uplifted; yet he must cut instantly when it is plain she can live no
longer. And here one marvels; for how can anything be plain in a
blinding, deafening cataract? And how shall the man decide, as they rise
on a glassy sweep and hang for an instant over some rock-gulf beaten
into by tons of water, whether they can go through it or not? Truly this
is no place for wavering nerve or halting judgment. The man must know
and act, _know and act_, because he is that kind of a man; and, even so,
in hard places above the second cataract two Indians from Caughnawaga,
Morris and Capitan, fine pilots both, held back their blades too long,
or, striking as the boat plunged, missed the rope, and paid for the
error with their lives.

[Illustration: CUTTING THE LINE--A MOMENT OF PERIL.]

And even with hauling-line cut in time, the pilots have only changed
from peril to peril, for now they are adrift in the cataract, and must
shoot down unknown rapids, chancing everything, swinging into shore as
soon as may be with the help of paddle and sail. Then is all to be done
over again--the line made fast, the black men harnessed on, and the risk
of a new channel encountered as before. Thus days or weeks would pass in
getting the whale-boats up a single cataract.

And sometimes they would face the still more formidable task of dragging
a whole steamboat up the rapids, with troops aboard and stores to last
for weeks. Then how the hauling-men would swarm at the lines, and shout
queer African words, and strain at the ropes, when the order came, until
knees and shoulders scraped the ground! This was no problem for
untutored minds, but took the best wits of Royal Engineers and gentlemen
from the schools, who knew the ways of hitching tackle to things so as
to make pulley-blocks work miracles. At least, it seemed a miracle the
day they started the big side-wheeler _Nassif-Kheir_ up the second
cataract with five hawsers on her, three spreading