ACCIDENTS 
pull out of the water the baggage which was fastened 
to it. The four hundred developed negatives had all got 
soaked. My note-books, too, were drenched through. 
Another heavy task was before me now, in order to 
save all that valuable material. It was to spread every¬ 
thing to dry thoroughly in the wind before it could be 
packed again. 
Filippe and Benedicto were so scared that on no ac¬ 
count, they said, would they go on board that raft again. 
The accident occurred at about nine o’clock in the morn¬ 
ing; by one or two o’clock in the afternoon everything 
was dry and carefully repacked. 
We decided to make a fresh start. My feet had 
hardly a patch of skin left on them; and were so swollen 
that I could walk no more. It was agreed that Filippe 
>d Benedicto should go on walking along the left bank 
3 much as possible, while I alone, with the baggage, navi¬ 
gated the river. We would keep in touch by occasional 
shouts. 
I got along pretty well, floating down with the cur¬ 
rent; but paddling and punting were most difficult, the 
raft being almost impossible to steer. On several occa¬ 
sions I had narrow escapes, just avoiding striking danger¬ 
ous rocks — particularly going down a small corrideira. 
After I had gone about two kilometres I was so ex¬ 
hausted that I called to Filippe to come on board again. 
Eventually — and I must say that I admired his courage 
— he came on board, and the two of us proceeded quite 
well down the stream, one paddling, the other punting. 
We got into a small rapid, where the current was 
strong. We were unfortunately thrown violently against 
some rocks, the central bottles of our raft receiving a 
hard knock. One of them cracked badly. I was quite 
perplexed when my eye caught sight of the radiations in 
the glass caused by the impact. Then my ear began to 
notice the sound of the trickling of water getting inside 
295 
