Pouring
towards the boat, in a fever of excitement that rises higher every
moment, the natural elements of hunger and constant struggle against the
great river swell their fury; they bellow like wild beasts, _they are
like beasts_, for they have known nothing but struggle all their lives;
they have always, since they were tiny children, been fighting this
roaring water monster--they know none else. And now, as I say, they
bellow like beasts, each man ravenously eager to be among the number
chosen to earn a few cash.[D] The arrangement at last is made, and the
discordant hubbub, instead of lessening, grows more and more deafening.
It is a miserable, desperate, wholly panic-stricken crowd that then
harnesses up with their great hooks joined to a rough waist-belt, with
which they connect themselves to the straining tow-lines.
And now her nose is put into the teeth of this trough of treachery--a
veritable boiling cauldron, stirring up all past mysteries. Waves rush
furiously towards us, with the growl of a thousand demons, whose anger
is only swelled by the thousands of miles of her course from far-away
Tibet. It seems as if they must instantly devour her, and that we must
now go under to swell the number of their victims.
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