tion was even in
the broken water. Presently the two Indians left the canoe, and seating
themselves on the poles, paddled towards the shore to the left, and
getting out of the current made their way along the edge of the forest.

"We are close now," Hurka said, "to the Madeira, and the struggle of the
two swollen rivers will raise a turmoil so great that even this raft might
break up in the waves."

This Stephen could well believe when the canoe reached the angle where the
rivers joined. The width was nearly two miles, and the scene presented the
appearance of the sea in a violent gale, except that it was a chaos
without order or regularity. The cross currents seemed to crash against
each other, hurling the spray many yards in the air. Waves leapt up in
conical form as if lifted bodily from below. The position of the centre of
the stream changed continually as one current or the other gained the
mastery. Here and there were whirlpools and eddies that would have
engulfed an ordinary boat in a moment. The whole was white with foam.

"It is like a huge boiling pot," Stephen said as he watched it.

"No boat ever made could live in it," Hurka said. "I have seen boats on
the great waves that break on the coast, but there was an order in the
waves, and those skilled in the work could wait their opportunity and come
in on the top of one of them. Here all is confusion, and a boat would be
thrown into the air by one of those suddenly rising lumps of water, and if
caught between two of the waves would be crushed like a shell. No one
would think of descending the river when the Beni and the Madeira are in
flood, except by doing as we are doing now, keeping in the dead-water, or,
if in canoes, making their way through the submerged forests. But even
this would be hazardous work, for the canoe might be torn by unseen boughs
below the surface of the water. Therefore at times like these, most men
wait until the floods have abated, unless they are in a great hurry, and
this is seldom, for neither Indians nor Peruvians are ever in haste about
anything.

"The greatest danger to inexperienced travellers is that of being lost in
the forest. Many streams come in, and when the water is very high it is
difficult to know whether one is crossing a tract denuded of wood or one
of the many channels of the river; and once lost in the forest a
traveller's fate is sealed, for the current there is insufficient to
enable him to judge in which direc