242 OUR SEARCH FOR A WILDERNESS. 



back to our boat, for we were still far from Anna Regina, 

 where we planned to spend the night. 



On and on we went, the darkness settling quickly down. 

 A new Castanet Frog raised its voice. This was really 

 remarkable a syncopated Oriental rhythm, clicking musi- 

 cally, and held by one frog for only a minute or two when 

 another instantly took up the little tune. This shifting of 

 place, the music sounding first here, then farther on, made 

 it seem as if some invisible dancer were swiftly whirling over 

 the reeds and tules. One could hear the clicking of the cas- 

 tanets and the tinkling of anklets, and the thought was made 

 more vivid as a bejewelled coolie woman passed us in a long 

 narrow dug-out, paddled swiftly by her husband. 



The water was very high and a wide new channel among the 

 grasses so confused Marciano that we paddled for an hour 

 before we realized that we were lost. We changed direction 

 and guided ourselves by the stars, passing some dense grass 

 through which we had to push laboriously. At last Marciano 

 sent a clear, penetrating call through the night and the coolie 

 answered, far ahead and to the left. We called twice after 

 that and then came into a canal, and soon were alongside 

 two canoes blocked by a lock. We would have as soon ex- 

 pected to find a motor car here in the wilderness as a canal 

 lock, but nevertheless there was a canal lock with no one to 

 operate it. By our combined efforts we opened it, passed 

 through and found ourselves surrounded by miles of sugar- 

 cane fields. We had entered the back door, as it were, of the 

 great sugar plantation of Anna Regina, one of the few which 

 are still in operation. We were on the home stretch and the 

 Indian boys towed us the remaining distance, running at full 

 speed, tumbling head over heels into the water; and forgetting 

 for once their usual Indian stolidness, they giggled and chat- 

 tered as if they were out for a lark, instead of having paddled a 

 heavily laden canoe on thirty-six hour stretches ! 



