Any one who is afraid to
go down into a dark cellar to get some apples from a barrel at the foot
of the stairs, can have no idea of the sort of mind possessed by
Bartholemy Portuguez. The animals might howl around him and glare at him
with their shining eyes, and the alligators might lash the water into
foam with their great tails, but he was bound for Golpho Triste and was
not to be stopped on his way by anything alive.
But at last he came to something not alive, which seemed to be an
obstacle which would certainly get the better of him. This was a wide
river, flowing through the inland country into the sea. He made his way
up the shore of this river for a considerable distance, but it grew but
little narrower, and he could see no chance of getting across. He could
not swim and he had no wine-jars now with which to buoy himself up, and
if he had been able to swim he would probably have been eaten up by
alligators soon after he left the shore. But a man in his situation
would not be likely to give up readily; he had done so much that he was
ready to do more if he could only find out what to do.
Now a piece of good fortune happened to him, although to an ordinary
traveller it might have been considered a matter of no importance
whatever. On the edge of the shore, where it had floated down from some
region higher up the river, Bartholemy perceived an old board, in which
there were some long and heavy rusty nails.
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