deep in the dust. For a moment I felt myself about to go out of my mind
with worry and desperation.

Some allowance must be made for the feelings of a young man new to
responsibility. I thought of my crew. Half of them were ill, and I
really began to think that some of them would end by dying on board if
I couldn't get them out to sea soon. Obviously I should have to take my
ship down the river, either working under canvas or dredging with the
anchor down; operations which, in common with many modern sailors,
I only knew theoretically. And I almost shrank from undertaking them
shorthanded and without local knowledge of the river bed, which is so
necessary for the confident handling of the ship. There were no pilots,
no beacons, no buoys of any sort; but there was a very devil of a
current for anybody to see, no end of shoal places, and at least two
obviously awkward turns of the channel between me and the sea. But how
dangerous these turns were I would not tell. I didn't even know what
my ship was capable of! I had never handled her in my life. A
misunderstanding between a man and his ship in a difficult river with no
room to make it up, is bound to end in trouble for the man. On the other
hand, it must be owned I had not much reason to count upon a general run
of good luck. And suppose I had the misfortune to pile her up high and
dry on some beastly shoal? That would have been the final undoing of
that voyage. It was plain that if Falk refused to tow me out he would
also refuse to pull me off. This meant--what? A day lost at the
very best; but more likely a whole fortnight of frizzling on some
pestilential mud-flat, of desperate work, of discharging cargo; more than
likely it meant borrowing money at an exorbitant rate of interest--from
the Siegers' gang too at that. They were a power in the port. And that
elderly seaman of mine, Gambril, had looked pretty ghastly when I
went forward to dose him with quinine that morning. _He_ would certainly
die--not to speak of two or three others that seemed nearly as bad,
and of the rest of them just ready to catch any tropical disease going.
Horror, ruin and everlasting remorse. And no help. None. I had fallen
amongst a lot of unfriendly lunatics!

At any rate, if I must take my ship down myself it was my duty to
procure if possible some local knowledge. But that was not easy. The
only person I could think of for that service was a certain Johnson,
formerly captain of a country