Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/93

ordered them to cut some blanches of white-cedar, and other brush-trees, (for all the forest trees, are of greater specific gravity than water), and make two small rude rafts; one being for our guns, clothes, and ammunition, and the other for the accommodation of Boot. Having instructed two of the blacks to tow Boot's raft across, the third black, and my man, who could swim, started with the other raft; and having waited myself to see Boot safely launched, I swam after the others as quick as I could on account of the sharks, which are extremely numerous, both in the MacLeay, Nambucca, and Bellengen, near the mouths of these rivers. When I had landed, and looked back, I was surprised to see the blacks swimming across without Boot, whom I could perceive on the shore. It appeared that after I left him on the raft, on which he was kneeling, it suddenly broke loose, as the branches, which composed it, were only bound together by long pieces of the creeping cane, which grows in the brushes. Of course Boot was soused headlong into the water, but the blacks brought him up in a twinkling, and conveyed him on shore, and then swam over to tell us of his mishap, I was now in a great dilemma, for I saw it would not be safe for him to be brought over on so frail a raft, especially as a north-east wind had just sprung up, which furrowed the surface of the river with splashy waves, it was essentially necessary that I should communicate with him, that he might know what to do;