noonday to all of us. But, we all worked hard at managing the
rafts, under the direction of the seamen (of our own skill, I think we
never could have prevented them from oversetting), and we also worked
hard at making good the defects in their first hasty construction--which
the water soon found out. While we humbly resigned ourselves to going
down, if it was the will of Our Father that was in Heaven, we humbly made
up our minds, that we would all do the best that was in us.

And so we held on, gliding with the stream. It drove us to this bank,
and it drove us to that bank, and it turned us, and whirled us; but yet
it carried us on. Sometimes much too slowly; sometimes much too fast,
but yet it carried us on.

My little deaf and dumb boy slumbered a good deal now, and that was the
case with all the children. They caused very little trouble to any one.
They seemed, in my eyes, to get more like one another, not only in quiet
manner, but in the face, too. The motion of the raft was usually so much
the same, the scene was usually so much the same, the sound of the soft
wash and ripple of the water was usually so much the same, that they were
made drowsy, as they might have been by the constant playing of one tune.
Even on the grown people, who worked hard and felt anxiety, the same
things produced something of the same effect. Every day was so like the
other, that I soon lost count of the days, myself, and had to ask Miss
Maryon, for instance, whether this was the third or fourth? Miss Maryon
had a pocket-book and pencil, and she kept the log; that is to say, she
entered up a clear little journal of the time, and of the distances our
seamen thought we had made, each night.

So, as I say, we kept afloat and glided on. All day long, and every day,
the water, and the woods, and sky; all day long, and every day, the
constant watching of both sides of the river, and far ahead at every bold
turn and sweep it made, for any signs of Pirate-boats, or
Pirate-dwellings. So, as I say, we kept afloat and glided on. The days
melting themselves together to that degree, that I could hardly believe
my ears when I asked "How many now, Miss?" and she answered "Seven."

To be sure, poor Mr. Pordage had, by about now, got his Diplomatic coat
into such a state as never was seen. What with the mud of the river,
what with the water of the river, what with the sun, and the dews, and
the tearing boughs, and the thickets, it hung about