| Hearn had left his pack and carbine with Croft, yet even unfettered the crossing was exceptionally demandingHe waded through the rapids, stumbling from rock to rock, slipping to his knees many timesOnce he went under completely, rammed his shoulder against one of the stones, and came up gasping for air, faint from the painIt took him almost three minutes to move fifty yards and when he reached the other bank he was exhaustedFor thirty seconds he remained motionless, panting and coughing from the water he had swallowedThen he stood up, 466
lashed the vine about a tree, while Brown tied the other end to the roots of a sturdy bush
Croft was the first one across, carrying Hearn's pack and carbine besides his ownSlowly, one by one, the men struggled across the river, holding to the vineSome of them lopped their pack straps about it, and pulled themselves along hand over hand, their legs thrashing in the surf of the rapids or floundering anxiously to fend themselves off the rocksThe water would have reached only to their thighs if they had been fendi spy bag replica able to stand upright, but all of them were drenched by the time they reached the other bankThey collected in a little eddy ahead of the rapids, and sat in the water panting, enervated for the moment
"Jesus," one of them would mutter from time to timeThe force of the rapids had been terrifyingEach of them as he had negotiated the line had expected secretly that he would be drowned
After a rest of ten minutes they began to march againThere were no more rapids for a time but the river was flowing down a chain of stone ledges, and every ten or fifteen yards they would have to climb a waist-high shelf, tread forward cautiously along a rock platform over which a few inches of water was flowing, and then scramble up to the next ledgeAlmost all of them wet their guns at one time or another, and their grenades, wedged by the spoon handle into their cartridge belts, kept spilling out into the waterEvery few seconds one of them would swear dully
The river became narrowerIn some places the banks were not more than five yards apart, and the jungle replica gucci canvas bag overhead grew so close to the water that it brushed against their facesThey continued on for a quarter of a mile, squatting under the foliage and bellying over the ledgesCrossing the rapids had drained them, and most of the men were too weary to lift their legsWhen they came to a new shelf of rock, they flopped their bodies over the edge and slid their legs up behind them with the motions of salmon laboring upstream for the spawning seasonThe river was dividing into its tributaries; every hundred yards a rill or tiny brook would trickle out of the jungle, and Croft would halt, examine it for a moment, and then move on againAfter his solo across the rapids, Hearn had been content to let Croft manage the platoon again for a timeHe plodded behind with the others, still unable to regain his wind
They came to a junction where the stream divided in twoIn the jungle, unable to see the sun, it was impossible for anyone but Martinez or him to know in what direction they were travelingCroft had noticed earlier that the larger trees leaned toward the black chanel quilted bag northwest; he had checked it with his compass, and decided they had been wrenched that way in a hurricane when they were youngHe accepted it as a reliable guide, and all that morning as they had moved up the river he had been noting the direction in which they marchedHe guessed that they must be very close to the end of the jungle; they had walked more than three miles, and the river generally had moved toward the hillsBut here it was impossible to determine which stream to follow; both veered off at an angle, and it was conceivable they might meander for miles through the jungle, parallel to the open hillsHe and Martinez talked about it, and Martinez selected a tall tree off the stream and began to climb it
He clambered up by grasping the vines that circled about it, using the nodes of the trunk for his footholdsWhen he reached the highest fork, he crawled out on a limb, edging himself forward cautiouslyHigh up, he halted and surveyed the terrainThe jungle spread beneath him in a green velvet napHe could no longer see the river, but not more than chanel jewelry half a mile away the jungle ended abruptly, and a progression of bare yellow hills mounted toward the distant slopes of Mount AnakaMartinez drew out his compass, and determined the directionHe was feeling the satisfaction of doing a job at which he knew he was proficient
He climbed down, and talked to Croft and the Lieutenant"We follow this one," he said, pointing to one of the tributaries, "maybe two-three hundred yard, then we cut trailNo river in the hill right there He pointed toward the open country he had seenThe information had not surprised him
The platoon began marching againThe stream Martinez had chosen was very narrow, and the jungle closed over it almost completelyAfter a hundred yards they were forced to slough through the water on their hands and knees, ducking their heads to avoid the leaves and brambles that drooped into the streamIt became shortly no wider than a footpath and began shredding into many tiny runs of water which seeped from the rocks of the forestBefore they had gone a quarter of a mile, Croft decided to cut chanel bags online tr |
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