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Careers of Danger and Daring

<hr style="width: 65%;" /> <h2>IV</h2> <h3>WHAT CANADIAN PILOTS DID IN THE CATARACTS OF THE NILE</h3> <div class='cap'>AND now suppose we follow these Indians to their reservation at Caughnawaga, where the government has given them land and civic rights and encouragement to peaceful ways. The surest time of year to find the pilots at home is the winter season; for then, with navigation frozen up, they have weeks to spend drifting along in the sleepy village life, waiting for the spring. There, in many a hearth-fire circle,—only, alas! the hearth is a commonplace shiny stove more often than not,—we may listen to tales without end of rapids and river, while the men smoke solemnly, and the women do beadwork and moccasins for the next year's peddling. We may hear "Big Baptiste" tell for what exploits of the paddle his head came to be on the ten-dollar bills of Canada, set in dignity and feathers; and hear "Big John," famous for years as a steamboat pilot, describe his annual shooting of the Lachine Rapids at the opening of navigation, when, first of all the pilots, he goes down in his canoe,—this is a time-honored custom,—so that the others may be sure that it is safe to follow.</div> He will give us the story, too, amid nods of approval, of shooting these same rapids for a wager on a certain New Year's Day, and coming down safely, ice and all. There, sir, is the paddle he used, if you doubt the tale, and the canoe lies out in the snow. And be sure we shall not have been long in Caughnawaga without hearing of the proud part these Indians took in the British expedition up the Nile in 1884 to relieve Khartum. Treasured in more than one household are these words of Lord Wolseley, written to the governor-general of Canada: "I desire to place on record not only my own opinion, but that of every officer connected with the management of the boat columns, that the services of these voyageurs has been of the greatest possible value.... They have on many occasions shown not only great skill but also great courage in navigating their boats through difficult and dangerous waters." "How many men did Caughnawaga send on this expedition?" I inquired. "Fifty-five men besides Louis Jackson," said one of the Indians. "Oh," said I; "and—and who is Louis Jackson?" The Indian's face showed plain disgust that there should be any one who did not know all about Louis Jackson. "Louis Jackson was the leader. He is our chief man. He lives over there." It resulted in my calling on Mr. Jackson, a big, powerful man, fully meriting, I should say, the high opinion in which he is held. If there is any Indian strain in him it must be very slight; he would pass, rather, for an uncommonly energetic Englishman, with such a fund of adventure to his credit, and so entertaining a way of drawing upon it, that one would listen for hours while he talks. Jackson made clear to me what important duty was given the Canadian voyageurs in this Nile campaign. By their success or failure in taking heavy-laden boats up the cataracts Lord Wolseley proposed to decide whether the troops for Gordon's relief should go straight up the Nile or around by the Red Sea and the desert. It was the river if they succeeded; it was the desert if they failed: and twenty thousand soldiers waited at Alexandria in a fever of impatience while Jackson and his band, with some hundreds of voyageurs from other provinces, let it be seen if their training on the St. Lawrence would serve against river perils in ancient Egypt. Lord Wolseley was confident it would, for during the Riel rebellion he had found out what stuff was in these men. Still he dared not start his army until it was certain those formidable cataracts could be surmounted. And that meant a month, let the men strain as they might at paddles and hauling-lines—a month to wait, a month for Gordon to wait. <div class="figleft"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus36.jpg" width-obs="226" height-obs="350" alt="THE PILOT, "BIG JOHN."" title="" /> THE PILOT, "BIG JOHN."</div> "Oh," said Jackson, gloomily, "if Lord Wolseley had only trusted us without any trial! Why, there was nothing, sir, in that Nile River we hadn't tackled a hundred times as boys right here in the St. Lawrence. When you talk of cataracts it sounds big, but we've got rapids all around here, just plain every-day rapids, that will make their cataracts look sick. Of course we did it—did it easy; but when we got up to the top of the whole business, where was our army? Back in Alexandria, sir! And it makes a man sad to know that those boys in Khartum were dying just then; it makes a man mighty sad to know that!" One sees what ground there may be for such lament on turning up the dates of this unhappy Nile expedition, and the heart aches at the sight of those dumb figures. Think of it! the relief-party reached Khartum about February 1, 1885—too late by less than a week. Khartum had fallen; Khartum, sore-stricken, lay in fresh-smoking ruins. And when at last British gunboats, firing as they came, steamed into view of the tortured city that had hoped for them so long, there was no General Gordon within walls to thrill with joy. General Gordon was dead, cut down ruthlessly by the Arabs a few days before—killed on January 27, with his countrymen so near, so short a distance down the river, that their camp might almost have been made out with field-glasses. What a difference here a little more hurrying would have made, a very little more hurrying! It would be interesting indeed if we might hear the whole story of these months spent in fighting a river, in battling with cataract after cataract, in rowing and steering and sailing and hauling a fleet of boats and supplies for an army up, up, up into unknown rapids, through a burning desert, such a long, long way. It would be an inspiration could we know in detail what these pilots did and suffered, what perils they defied, and how some of them perished—in short, what problems of the river they went at and how they fared in solving them. That would make a book by itself. A few things we may know, however. This, for instance: that, while the maps put down six cataracts in the Nile between Cairo and Khartum, say fifteen hundred miles, there are, in truth, many more than six. Between the second and third alone there are more than six, and some of them bad. Also that the river beyond the third cataract curves away in a great rambling S, so that Lord Wolseley planned to send an expedition, as he actually did, straight on from that point by a short cut across the desert. The important thing then, and the difficult thing, was to reach the third cataract, and upon this all the skill of the voyageurs was concentrated. The first cataract, about five hundred miles above Cairo, is fairly easy of ascent; the second cataract, some two hundred and fifty miles farther on, is perhaps the most dangerous of all, and resembles its rival at Lachine in this, that the Nile here strains through myriad foam-lashed islands strewn in the channel for a length of seven miles, like teeth of a crooked comb. A balloonist hovering here would see the river streaming through these islands in countless channels that wind and twist in a maze of silver threads. But to lads in the boats these silver threads were so many plunging foes, torrents behind torrents, sweeping down roaring streets of rock, boiling through jagged lanes of rock; and up that seven-mile way the pilots had to go and keep their craft afloat. <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus37.jpg" width-obs="500" height-obs="312" alt="HAULING A STEAMER UP THE NILE RAPIDS." title="" /> HAULING A STEAMER UP THE NILE RAPIDS.</div> Jackson described the boats used in this hazardous undertaking. There were, first, the ordinary whale-boats, about twenty-five feet long and five feet high, with a crew of ten Dongolese at the oars, and two or three sails to catch the helpful northerly winds. Overhead was an awning stretched against the scorching sun, and around the sides were boxes and bags of provisions and ammunition,—five or six tons to a boat,—piled high for shelter against bullets, for no one could tell when a band of Arabs, lurking at some vantage-point, might fall to picking off the men. At a cataract the crew would go ashore, save two, a voyageur in the stern to steer and another in the bow to fend off rocks, or, in case of need, give one swift, severing hatchet-stroke on the hauling-rope. For, of course, the ascending power came from a line of Dongolese, black fellows, with backs and muscles to delight a prize-fighter, who, by sheer strength of body, would drag the boat, cargo and all (or sometimes lightened of her cargo by the land-carriers), up, up, with grunting and heaving, against the down-rush of the river. And woe to the boat if her hatchet-man fails to cut the rope at the very second of danger! So long as the craft can live his arm must stay uplifted; yet he must cut instantly when it is plain she can live no longer. And here one marvels; for how can anything be plain in a blinding, deafening cataract? And how shall the man decide, as they rise on a glassy sweep and hang for an instant over some rock-gulf beaten into by tons of water, whether they can go through it or not? Truly this is no place for wavering nerve or halting judgment. The man must know and act, know and act, because he is that kind of a man; and, even so, in hard places above the second cataract two Indians from Caughnawaga, Morris and Capitan, fine pilots both, held back their blades too long, or, striking as the boat plunged, missed the rope, and paid for the error with their lives. <div class="figleft"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus38.jpg" width-obs="346" height-obs="500" alt="CUTTING THE LINE—A MOMENT OF PERIL." title="" /> CUTTING THE LINE—A MOMENT OF PERIL.</div> And even with hauling-line cut in time, the pilots have only changed from peril to peril, for now they are adrift in the cataract, and must shoot down unknown rapids, chancing everything, swinging into shore as soon as may be with the help of paddle and sail. Then is all to be done over again—the line made fast, the black men harnessed on, and the risk of a new channel encountered as before. Thus days or weeks would pass in getting the whale-boats up a single cataract. And sometimes they would face the still more formidable task of dragging a whole steamboat up the rapids, with troops aboard and stores to last for weeks. Then how the hauling-men would swarm at the lines, and shout queer African words, and strain at the ropes, when the order came, until knees and shoulders scraped the ground! This was no problem for untutored minds, but took the best wits of Royal Engineers and gentlemen from the schools, who knew the ways of hitching tackle to things so as to make pulley-blocks work miracles. At least, it seemed a miracle the day they started the big side-wheeler Nassif-Kheir up the second cataract with five hawsers on her, three spreading from her bow and two checking her swing on either quarter, and her own steam helping her. <div class="figright"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus39.jpg" width-obs="356" height-obs="475" alt=""OVER THEY WENT, THE WHOLE BLACK LINE OF THEM."" title="" /> "OVER THEY WENT, THE WHOLE BLACK LINE OF THEM."</div> There stood five hundred Dongolese ready to haul, and there was the whole floating population—pilots, soldiers, and camp-followers—gathered on the banks to wonder and to criticize the job which nobody understood but half a dozen straight little men in white helmets, who stood about on rocks and snapped things out in English that were straightway yelled down the lines in vigorous Dongolese. It was Trigonometry speaking, and the law of component forces, and "Confound those niggers! Tell 'em to slack away on that starboard hawser. Tell 'em to slack away!" It was respectfully presented to Mathematics, Esq., that the "niggers" in question couldn't slack away any more without letting the hawser go or tumbling into the rapids, for they were on one of the little islands, on the brink of it, holding the steamer back while the land-lines hauled against them. <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus40.jpg" width-obs="400" height-obs="324" alt="HOW THE ENGINEERS WERE CARRIED OVER TO THE NILE ISLANDS." title="" /> HOW THE ENGINEERS WERE CARRIED OVER TO THE NILE ISLANDS.</div> "Then in they go," ordered Trigonometry. "Tell 'em to get over to that next island. Tell 'em to get over quick!" And over they went, the whole black line of them, right through the rapids, swimming and struggling in the buffeting surge, getting across somehow, hawser and all, where white men must have perished. And the steamboat had gained a hundred feet. Then one of the front lines of haulers in turn had to move forward to an island, to swim for it with six hundred feet of hawser slapping the river as they dragged it. What a picture here as these naked men leaped in, fearless, each with a flashing bayonet thrust in his thick white turban! Mathematics, Esq., had no notion of trying this sort of thing when he changed islands, vastly preferring his pulley-blocks, and would presently be hauled across on a rope trolley, as passengers are swung ashore from wrecks by the life-saving men. That made a picture, too! Thus, slowly and with infinite pains, they worked the patient steamboat, length by length, island by island, torrent by torrent, up through the Great Gate (Bab-el-Kebir), up to the very head waters of the second cataract; and there, with victory in their grasp, saw the forward hawser snap suddenly with the noise of a gun, and the old side-wheeler swing out helpless into the main rush of the river, swing clean around as the side-lines held, and then start down. Whereupon it was: "Cut hawsers, everybody!" and drop these pulley-blocks and tackle-fixings, useless now, and let her go, let her go, since there is no stopping her, and Heaven help the boys on board! Then, amid shouts of dismay, the big boat Nassif-Kheir plunged forward to her destruction, while the mathematical gentlemen stared in horror—then stared in amazement. For look! She keeps to the channel! She is running true! Wonder of wonders, she is shooting the rapids, shooting the greatest cataract of the Nile, where boats of her tonnage never passed before! The Nassif-Kheir was saved, and every man aboard her, and every box of stores. She was saved by an humble Canadian pilot, who had never studied trigonometry, but who stepped to the wheel when he saw the peril, and steered her down those furious rapids as he had steered other boats down other rapids on the old St. Lawrence. After that, when the expedition found itself in trouble in the upper cataracts, say those of Tangoor or Akashe or Ambigole or Dal, and when the Royal Engineers had drawn up some neat plan with compasses and squares for doing a certain thing with a boat, and had proved by the books that it could be done, and agreed that it should be done forthwith, then some one would usually say, just at the last, as by an afterthought: "I suppose we might as well have in one of those voyageur chaps, just to see what he thinks of it!" And they usually had him in. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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