This was her last effort; she disappeared. By the time several
men had wisely run along the bank below the tail of the rapids,
and having formed a line across a very narrow portion of the
stream, one of them suddenly clutched an object beneath the water
and in another moment he held the body of the girl in his arms.
Of course she was dead? or a fit subject for the Royal Humane
Society?--So I supposed; when to our intense astonishment, she no
sooner was brought to the shore than she gave herself a shake,
threw back her long hair, wrung out and arranged her dripping
rahat, and walked leisurely back to the ford, which she crossed
with the assistance of the Arab who had saved her.
What she was composed of I cannot say; whether she was the
offspring of a cross between mermaid and hippopotamus, or hatched
from the egg of a crocodile, I know not, but a more wonderfully
amphibious being I have rarely seen.
During this painful scene, in which one girl had been entirely
lost, the mother of her who was saved had rushed to meet her
child as she landed from the ford; but instead of clasping her to
her heart, as we had expected, she gave her a maternal welcome by
beating her most unmercifully with her fists, bestowing such
lusty blows upon her back that we could distinctly hear them at
a distance of fifty yards; this punishment, we were given to
understand, served her perfectly right, for having been foolish
enough to venture near the rapids.
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