Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1876 Excerpt:...runs like a mill-race. If we enter it, nothing would seem to be able to hold the boat from dashing down amidst the breakers. But the bow is hardly let to feel the current before it is pulled short round, and we are swinging in the swift stream. Before we know it we are in the anxiety of another tug. Suppose the rope should break! In an instant the black swimmers are overboard striking out for the rocks; two ropes are sent out, and secured; and, the gangs hauling on them, we are working inch by inch through, everybody on board trembling with excitement. We look at our watches; it seems only fifteen minutes since we left Assouan; it is an hour and a quarter. Do we gain in the chute? It is difficult to say; the boat hangs back and strains at the cables; but just as we are in the pinch of doubt, the big sail unfurls its wing with exciting suddenness, a strong gust catches it, we feel the lift, and creep upward, amid an infernal din of singing and shouting and calling on the Prophet from the gangs who haul in the sail-rope, who tug at the cables attached to the rocks, who are pulling at the hawsers on the shore. We forge ahead and are about to dash into a boiling caldron before us, from which there appears to be no escape, when a skillful turn of the great creaking helm once more throws us to the left, and we are again in an eddy with the stream whirling by us, and the sail is let go and is furled. The place where we lie is barely long enough to admit our boat; its stern just clears the rocks, its bow is aground on hard sand. The number of men and boys on the rocks has THE GRANITE MAN. 245 increased; it is over one hundred, it is one hundred and thirty; on a re-count it is one hundred and fifty. An anchor is now carried out to hold us in position when we make a...