niel pointed out to him "The Conquest" as she lay not six hundred
yards off in the river, showing her lights.

"That is rather far," grumbled the man; "the tide is low; and the
current is very strong."

"I'll give you a couple of francs for your trouble."

The man clapped his hands with delight, and said,--

"Ah! if that's the way, all right. Come along, Mr. Officer, a little
farther down. There, that's my boat. Get in, now steady!"

Daniel followed his directions; but he was so much struck by the man's
awkwardness in getting the boat off, that he could not help saying to
him,--

"Ah, my boy, you are not a boatman, after all!"

"I beg pardon, sir; I used to be one before I came to this country."

"What is your country?"

"Shanghai."

"Nevertheless, you will have to learn a great deal before you will ever
be a sailor."

Still, as the boat was very small, a mere nutshell, in fact, Daniel
thought he could, if needs be, take an oar himself. Thereupon, sitting
down, and stretching out his legs, he was soon once more plunged in
meditations. The unfortunate man was soon roused, however, by a terrible
sensation.

Thanks to a shock, a wrong movement, or any other accident, the boat
upset, and Daniel was thrown into the river; and, to fill the measure of
his mishaps, one of his feet was so closely jammed in between the seat
and the boat itself, that he was paralyzed in his movements, and soon
under water.

He saw it all in an instant; and his first thought was,--

"I am lost!"

But, desperate as his position was, he was not the man to give up.
Gathering, by one supreme effort, all his strength and energy, he took
hold of the boat, that had turned over just above him, and pushed it so
forcibly, that he loosened his foot, and at the same moment reached the
surface. It was high time; for Daniel had swallowed much water.

"Now," he thought, "I have a chance to escape!"

A very frail chance, alas!--so small a chance, in fact, that it required
all the strong will and the invincible courage of Daniel to give it
any effect. A furious current carried him down like a straw; the little
boat, which might have supported him, had disappeared; and he knew
nothing about this formidable Dong-Nai, except that it went on widening
to its mouth. There was nothing to guide him; for the night was so dark,
that land and water, the river and its banks, all melted together in the
uniform, bottomless darkness.

What had become of th