e boatman, however? At all events, he called,--

"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