Rollo on the Rhine Part 11

Very soon the waiter came to the door.

"This young gentleman who is with me," said Mr. George, "wishes to go on board this raft, and sail down the river a little way."

"Yes, sir," said the waiter. "Rudolf is arranging it for him."

"Very well," said Mr. George. "And now I wish to have you send a commissioner secretly to accompany him. The commissioner is to remain on the raft as long as Rollo does, and leave it when he leaves it, and keep in sight of him all the time till he gets home, so as to see that he does not get into any difficulty."

"Yes, sir," said the waiter.

"But let the commissioner understand that he is not to let Rollo know any thing about his having any charge over him, nor to communicate with him in any way, unless some emergency should arise requiring him to interpose."

"Yes, sir," said the waiter, "I will explain it to him."

"And choose a good-natured and careful man to send," continued Mr.

George; "one that speaks French."

"Yes, sir," replied the waiter; and so saying, he disappeared, leaving Mr. George to go on with his writing.

In the mean time Rollo had gone down to the sh.o.r.e with the waiter Rudolf, and was standing there near a boat which was drawn up at the foot of the landing stairs, watching the raft, which was now getting pretty near. There was a great company of men at each end of the raft.

Rollo could see those at the lowest end the plainest. They were standing in rows near the end of the raft, and every six of them had an oar.

There were eight or ten of these oars, all projecting forward, from the front end of the raft, and the raftsmen, by working them, seemed to be endeavoring to row that end of the raft out farther into the stream. It was the same at the farther end of the raft. There was a similar number of oarsmen there, and of oars, only those projected behind, just as the others did before. There were no oars at all along the sides of the raft.

The fact is, that these monstrous rafts are always allowed to float down by the current, the men not attempting to hasten them on their way by rowing. All that they attempt to do by their labor is to keep the immense and unwieldy ma.s.s in the middle of the stream. Thus they only need oars at the two ends, and the working of them only tends to row the raft sidewise, as it were. Sometimes they have to row the ends from left to right, and sometimes from right to left, according as the current tends to drift the raft towards the left or the right bank of the river.

Rollo did not understand this at first, and accordingly, when he first saw these rafts coming with a dense crowd of men at each end, rowing vigorously, while there was not a single oar to be seen, nor even any place for an oar along the sides, he was very much surprised at the spectacle. He thought that the men at the back end of the raft were sculling; but what those at the forward end were doing he could not imagine. When, however, he came to consider the case, he saw what the explanation must be, and so he understood the subject perfectly.

At length, when Rollo saw that the forward end of the raft, in its progress down the river, had come nearly opposite to the place where he was standing, he got into the boat, and the boatman rowed him out to the raft. As soon as they reached the raft Rollo stepped out upon the boards and logs. The top of the raft made a very good and smooth floor, being covered with boards, and it was high and dry above the water. Rollo looked down into the interstices, and saw that that part of the raft which was under water was formed of logs and timbers of very large size, placed close together side by side, with a layer above crossing the layer below. The whole was then covered with a flooring of boards, so close and continuous that Rollo had to look for some time before he could find any openings where he could look down and see how the raft was constructed.

In the middle of the raft were several houses. The houses were made of boards, and were of the plainest and simplest construction. Around the doors of these houses several women were sitting wherever they could find shady places. Some were knitting and some were sewing. There were several children there too, amusing themselves in various ways. One was skipping a rope. Rudolf conducted Rollo up to one of these families, and told the women that he was an American boy, who was travelling with his uncle on the Rhine, and seeing this raft going by, had a curiosity to come on board of it. The women looked very much pleased when they heard this. Some of them had friends in America, and others were thinking of going themselves with their husbands; and they immediately began to talk very volubly to Rollo, and to ask him questions. But as they spoke German, Rollo could not understand what they said.

In the mean time the waiter had gone away to speak to the captain of the raft, and to make arrangements for having Rollo put ash.o.r.e when he had sailed long enough upon it. The captain was walking to and fro, upon a raised platform, near the middle of the raft. This platform I will describe presently. In a few minutes the man returned.

"The captain gives you a good welcome," said he, "and says he wishes he could talk English, for he wants to ask you a great many questions about America. He says you may stay on the raft as long as you please, and when you wish to go ash.o.r.e, you have only to go and get on board one of the boats, and that will be a signal. He will soon see you there, and will send a man to row you to the sh.o.r.e."

Rollo liked this plan very much. So Rudolf, having arranged every thing, wished Rollo a "good voyage," and went off in the boat as he came.

Thus Rollo was left alone, as it were, upon the raft; and for a moment he felt a little appalled at the idea of going down through such a dark and gloomy gorge as the bed of the river here presented to view, on such a strange conveyance, and surrounded with so wild and savage a horde of men as the raftsmen were,--especially since, as he supposed, there was not a human being on board with whom he could exchange a word of conversation. It is true the commissioner whom his uncle George had sent was on the raft. He had come out in the same boat with Rollo, and had remained when the boat went back to the sh.o.r.e. But Rollo had not noticed him particularly. He observed, it is true, that two men came with him to the raft, and that only one returned; but he thought it probable that the other might be going down the river a little way, or perhaps that he belonged to the raft. He had not the least idea that the man had come to take charge of _him_, and so he felt as if he were entirely alone in the new and strange scene to which he found himself so suddenly transferred.

There were, however, so many things to attract his attention that at first he had no time to think much of his loneliness. There was a fire burning at a certain part of the raft, not far from the door of one of the houses, and he went to see it. As soon as he reached it, the mystery in respect to the means of having a fire on such a structure, without setting the boards and timbers on fire, was at once solved. Rollo found that the fire was built upon a hearth of _sand_. There was a large box, about four feet square and a foot deep, which box was filled with sand, and the fire was built in the middle of it. It seemed to Rollo that this was a very easy way to make a fireplace, especially as the sand seemed to be of a very common kind, such as the raftsmen had probably shovelled up somewhere on the sh.o.r.e of the river.

"The very next time I build a raft," said Rollo, "I will have a fire on it in exactly that way."

There was a sort of barricade or screen built up on two sides of this fire, to keep the wind from blowing the flame and the heat away from the kettle that was hung over it. This screen was made of short boards, nailed to three posts, that were placed in such a manner as to make, when the boards were nailed to them, two short fences, at right angles to each other, or like two sides of a high box. The corner of this screen was turned towards the wind, and thus the fire was sheltered. A pole pa.s.sed across from one of the posts to the other, and the kettle was hung upon the pole.

After examining this fireplace Rollo went to look at the platform where the captain had his station. This platform was about six feet high and ten feet long; and it was just wide enough for the captain to walk to and fro upon it. There was a flight of steps leading up to this platform from the floor of the raft, and a little railing on each side of it, to keep the captain from falling off while he was walking there.

The object of having this platform raised in this way, was to give the captain a more commanding position, so as not only to enable him to survey the whole of the raft, and observe how every thing was going on upon it, but also to give him a good view of the river below, so that he might watch the currents, and see how the raft was drifting, and give the necessary orders for working it one way or the other, as might be required in order to keep it in the middle of the stream.

Then Rollo went to the forward end of the raft to see the raftsmen row.

The oars were of monstrous size, as you might well suppose to be the case from the fact that each of them required six men to work it. These six men all stood in a row along the handle of the oar, which seemed to be as large as a small mast. They all pressed down upon the handle of the oar so as to raise the blade out of the water, and then walked along over the floor of the raft quite a considerable distance. At last they stopped, and lifting up their hands, they allowed the blade of the oar to go down into the water. Then they turned, and began to push the oar with their hands the other way. The outside men had to reach up very high, for as the oar was very long, and the blade was now necessarily in the water, the end of the handle was raised quite high in the air. The men, accordingly, that were nearest the end of the oar, were obliged to hold their hands up high, in order to reach it; and they all walked along very deliberately, like a platoon of soldiers, pus.h.i.+ng the oar before them as they advanced. And as each of the other six oars had a similar platoon marching with it to and fro, and as all acted in concert, and kept time with each other in their motions, the whole operation had quite the appearance of a military manoeuvre. Rollo watched it for some time with great satisfaction.

After this Rollo walked up and down the raft two or three times, and then his attention was attracted by a steamer going by. The steamer cut her way through the water with great speed, and the waves made by her paddle wheels dashed up against the margin of the raft as if it had been along sh.o.r.e.

There was a great number of tourists on board the steamer. Rollo could see them very distinctly sitting under the awning on the deck. Some were standing by the railing and examining the raft by means of their spy gla.s.ses or opera gla.s.ses. Others were seated at tables, eating late breakfasts, in little parties by themselves. The boat glided by very swiftly, however, and soon Rollo could see nothing of her but the stern, and the foaming wake which her paddle wheels left behind them in the water.

As soon as the steamboat had gone by, Rollo began to feel a slight sense of loneliness on the raft, which feeling was increased by the sombre aspect of the scenery around him. The river was closely shut in by mountains on both sides, and between them the raft seemed to be drifting slowly down into a dark and gloomy gorge, which, though it might have seemed simply sublime to a pleasant party viewing it together from the cheerful deck of a steamer, or from a comfortable carriage on the banks, was well fitted to awaken an emotion of awe and terror in the mind of a boy like Rollo, floating down into it helplessly on an enormous raft, with a hundred men, looking more like brigands than any thing else, marching solemnly to and fro at either end of it, working prodigious oars, with incessant toil, to prevent its being carried upon the rocks and dashed to pieces. In fact, Rollo began soon to wish that he was safe on sh.o.r.e again.

"I am very thankful," said he to himself, "that I made a bargain with the captain to put me ash.o.r.e whenever I wished to go. I don't believe that I shall wish to go more than half way to Boppard."

So saying, Rollo looked anxiously down the river. The mountains looked more and more dark and gloomy, and they appeared to shut in before him in such a manner that he could not see how it could be possible for such an immense raft to twist its way through between them.

"I don't believe I shall wish to go more than a quarter of the way to Boppard," said he.

Two or three minutes afterwards, on looking back, he saw the town of St.

Goar, where he had embarked, gradually disappearing behind a wooded promontory which was slowly coming in the way, and cutting it off from view.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROLLO ON THE RAFT.]

"In fact," said Rollo to himself, "since I am not going all the way to Boppard, I had better not go much farther; for I shall have to walk back, as the steamer does not stop this side of Boppard. Besides, I have seen all that there is on the raft already, and there is no use in staying on it any longer."

So he concluded to go at once to the boat, according to the arrangement which he had made with the captain. He was afraid that he might have to wait some time before the captain would see him; but he did not. The captain saw him immediately, and sent a man to row him ash.o.r.e. _Two_ men came, in fact, the commissioner being one of them. But Rollo did not pay any particular attention to this circ.u.mstance. He did not even observe that it was the same man that had come on board with him. Rollo could not talk to the oarsman on the way, but on landing he gave him a little money,--about what he thought was proper,--and then went up into the road with a view to go home. The commissioner, in order not to awaken any suspicions in Rollo's mind that he was following him, turned away as soon as he landed, and walked along the tow path down the stream.

Rollo went slowly home. He had not been more than half an hour on the raft, and had not gone down the stream more than a mile; so that in three quarters of an hour after he had left his uncle at the hotel he found himself drawing near to it again, on his return.

He felt a little ashamed to get back so soon. So he thought that he would not go in at once and report himself to his uncle, but would go down on the bank of the river, and see if he could find a place to fish a little while, until some little time should have elapsed, so as to give to the period of his absence a tolerably respectable duration.

"Uncle George will laugh at me," said he to himself, "if he sees me come home so soon."

So Rollo went down to the quay, and taking out his fis.h.i.+ng line, he began to make arrangements for fis.h.i.+ng. He did not, however, feel quite at his ease. There seemed to be something a little like artifice in thus prolonging his absence in order to make his uncle think that he had gone farther down the river than he had been. It was not being quite honest, he thought.

"After all," said he to himself, "I'll go and tell uncle George now. I shall have a better time fis.h.i.+ng if I do. If he chooses to laugh at me, he may. If he is going to do it, I should like to have it over."

So he went into the hotel, and advanced somewhat timidly to the door of the room where he had left his uncle writing. He opened the door, and looking in, said,--

"Uncle George! I've got back."

Mr. George did not seem at all surprised, but looking up a moment from his writing, he smiled, and said,--

"Ah! I'm glad to see you safe back again. It is rather lonesome here without you. Did you have a pleasant voyage?"

"Yes," said Rollo, "very pleasant. Only I did not go very far. I got them to put me ash.o.r.e about a mile below here."

"That was right," said Mr. George. "You did exactly as I should have done myself. In fact you can see all you wish to see on such a raft in half an hour."

"Yes," said Rollo, "I found that I could."

"And I am very glad that you came to tell me," said Mr. George, "as soon as you came home."

So Rollo, quite relieved in mind, went down stairs again, and returning to the quay, he resumed his fis.h.i.+ng.