"Ho, ho, ho!" chuckled Macintosh, and the corporal began to think he had
said something funny. But no; Macintosh had trodden on an unusually
sharp flint, and that presented Grady's idea of what marching at ease
was in a ridiculous form to his mind. So when the pang was over he was
tickled.

"Eh, but Grady's a poor daft creature to call this marching at ease; ho,
ho!"

A particularly stiff bit came just now. The rope strained as if it
would snap; the bows of the nuggar were buried in foam, and the men
hauling were forced to take the corporal's hint, and keep their breath
for other purposes than conversation.

When they had got over the worst, however, the boat got jammed on a
rock, and the work of getting her off devolved on the crew on board of
her, unless she were so fast as to require the aid of the others, who
for the present got a much-required rest.

"A set of duffers, those chaps," said the sergeant in charge of the
party, a young fellow named Barton, of good parentage, and Kavanagh's
particular friend off duty. "A regular Nile reis, with his crew of four
natives, would never have stuck the nuggar _there_."

"I wish we had them Canadian vogajaws, sergeant," said Corporal Adams.

"Ay, they are first-rate," replied the sergeant.

"A good many boats have them, haven't they?"

"Oh, yes! Most I suppose, or we should not get on at all. But we have
not had the luck to get them for our craft. There are only a few of
these who know how to work a boat up rapids at all, and I fancy they are
only apprentices at it. As for the others, one of them owned to me that
he had never been on any river before the Nile but the Thames at Putney,
and his idea of a rapid was the tide rushing under the bridge."

"But sure, sergeant, he can sing `Row, brothers, row,' iligantly, he
can," said Grady.

"Ay, but he can't do it," replied the sergeant. "He ought to be in the
water now. There's Captain Reece overboard and shoving; I must try and
get to him. Stand by the rope, men, and haul away like blazes when she
shifts."

What with poling, and shoving, and pulling at the rope, the nuggar was
floated once more at last, and on they went again, and by-and-by the
river widened, and the current was not so strong, and so long as they
kept the rope pretty taut the boat came along without any very great
exertion.

"Have a pipe out of my baccy-box, just to show there's no malice?" said
Grady to Tarrant.

"Thankee, I will," r