CHAPTER XV.
In helpless Plight.
Some hours after leaving the grey cliff I reached a river about 180 yards wide. Before plunging into it to wade across, I took my noon-meal of baked flour : it was then about eleven o'clock. The river was the one of which I had been informed, and I knew it could be forded. After the repast I took off my boots and trousers, and having also tucked up the other portions of my dress, went down into the river. Oh! that plunge! it nearly killed me; the water was bitingly cold, and I saw at once that I could never survive the crossing of it. I at once turned round and crawled up the bank, but the contact with the water had already chilled me, and produced in me a sort of convulsion. What was to be done ? I happened to think of ointment as a remedy, as well as a preventive, under the circumstances. I took out a bottle of clove oil I had with me, and smeared it in abundance all over my body. What with the sun shining and my giving myself a good rubbing all over, I felt better. Then, equipped as before, I made a second plunge. The water was cold, indeed cold enough to make my feet quite insensible before I had gone half-way across, and the rest of the fording I managed simply by the help of my two staves. The river was about hip-deep and the stream quite rapid, and when I reached the opposite bank I found myself almost a frigid body, stiff and numb in every part.
The next thing to be done was, of course, to recover the circulation of blood in the almost frozen limbs ; but I discovered this to be no easy task, for my hands were too stiff to do anything, and it took full two hours to put myself in shape to resume the journey. As it was, when I
