When they had got over the worst, however, the boat got jammed on a rock, and the work of getting her off devolved on the crew on board of her, unless she were so fast as to require the aid of the others, who for the present got a much-required rest. "A set of duffers, those chaps," said the sergeant in charge of the party, a young fellow named Barton, of good parentage, and Kavanagh's particular friend off duty. "A regular Nile reis, with his crew of four natives, would never have stuck the nuggar _there_." "I wish we had them Canadian vogajaws, sergeant," said Corporal Adams. "Ay, they are first-rate," replied the sergeant. "A good many boats have them, haven't they?" "Oh, yes! Most I suppose, or we should not get on at all. But we have not had the luck to get them for our craft. There are only a few of these who know how to work a boat up rapids at all, and I fancy they are only apprentices at it. As for the others, one of them owned to me that he had never been on any river before the Nile but the Thames at Putney, and his idea of a rapid was the tide rushing under the bridge." "But sure, sergeant, he can sing `Row, brothers, row,' iligantly, he can," said Grady. "Ay, but he can't do it," replied the sergeant. "He ought to be in the water now. There's Captain Reece overboard and shoving; I must try and get to him. Stand by the rope, men, and haul away like blazes when she shifts." What with poling, and shoving, and pulling at the rope, the nuggar was floated once more at last, and on they went again, and by-and-by the river widened, and the current was not so strong, and so long as they kept the rope pretty taut the boat came along without any very great exertion. "Have a pipe out of my baccy-box, just to show there's no malice?" said Grady to Tarrant. "Thankee, I will," replied Tarrant, "for mine is so wet it won't burn. I went up to my neck in shoving off the first time we stuck, before we took to towing." "Eh, but that was a chance for the crocodiles!" cried Macintosh. "I saw ye go souse under, Tarrant, and thought one of them had got ye by the leg. Ye might have grumbled a bit then, and folks would have said you had reason." "It is all very fine," said Tarrant, "and if you chaps are pleased, you are welcome; but I don't call this riding on a camel. I had as soon have stopped with my own regiment, amongst sensible and pleasant lads, and taken my chance, as have volunteered to join this corps, if I had known I was to march all the same, and lug a beast of a boat after me too. I expected to have a camel to ride on." "Thank you for putting me in mind that I'm mounted," said Grady; "I had almost forgotten it." "Make your minds easy," said Sergeant Barton. "You will have plenty of camel riding in a day or two, quite as much as you like perhaps." "And I hope it will be before I have worn-out my third pair of boots," said Macintosh. "Eh, but this is a grievous waste of shoe-leather."