LIFE ON THE LAUNCH. 
14T 
nearly drowned. Perhaps the shock had given 
him a terror of ablutions. The engineer looked 
like an Italian, was white-skinned, and had a 
mop of curly black hair and a falsetto laugh 
like a hyena. He carried a little bit of looking- 
glass about with him, considered himself vastly 
superior to his company, and only became 
sociable when groups were to be photographed. 
But all four men served us faithfully, and put 
up good-temperedly with our foreign ways. 
The Capitan had seen better days : he knew the 
river as a stage-coachman used to know the 
road. On him depended our lives, for a mistake 
in steering might run us on a hidden rock, or 
take us straight into one of the appalling 
remolinos. He had been captain of one of the 
river steamers, but drank, and so had come 
down to taking a job when he could get one. 
He was an Argentine, and looked like an 
operatic tenor, portly and thick necked, with a 
dark moustache and heavily lidded dark eyes. 
He and Jerman, by virtue of their superior 
standing, slept on the space above the engines, 
where their vast bulks blotted out the stars that 
otherwise could be seen through the glass- 
topped sliding door that shut off the crew’s 
quarters from us. The Capitan, superior man, 
shrouded himself under a mosquito net, but I 
think, beyond this, preparations for bed did not 
go much further than the removal of boots. 
The engineer and Pedroso lowered themselves 
