On the 18th, he sent off a man to get some axes repaired by a native blacksmith. While the latter was engaged in the work, a spark flew from the anvil against the body of one of his children playing near by, burning him slightly. The enraged man asserted that the accident was owing to a wicked charm of the stranger, and, running out, he beat the war-drum, at which the excited natives assembled in great fury, and the poor Arab was in danger of immediate immolation, when the chief happened to arrive and saved him. On May 22d, the great teak canoe, the third which had been built, and which Stanley named Livingstone, was launched in the creek just above its entrance into the river amid the shouts of the natives. It could carry forty-six people. So far as means of transportation was concerned, Stanley was now at ease--but would there ever be a peaceful river on which these twelve canoes could float? It was now the 22d of May, and since the 24th of February there had been forty rainy days, and hence for the month they had been working their slow, tedious way over the ridges and mountains, the river had been continually rising and now, more than eleven feet above its usual height, it was rolling in a grand, resistless flood through the gorges. Thunder and lightning had accompanied the storms, lighting up the wild river, drowning its fierce roar and drenching the wanderers, till it seemed as if heaven itself was leagued with the natives and the cataracts to drive them to despair and to destruction. The river was still rising, and the rush and roar of the waters were only less terrific than the deafening thunder-peels that shook the chasm in which they were confined. Still they must move on, even though it should be to greater horrors and more desperate conditions and a darker fate. So on the 23d of May they set out, and carrying around a short fall in the creek on the banks of which they had been encamping, and ascending a mountain, they pushed slowly on for three miles over a plateau--the sick and suffering complaining bitterly, while the well were almost ready to give out and die then and there on the shores of the river. Every fall was expected to be the last, and yet each proved the forerunner only of a worse one to come.