Colonel Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [196]
Every morning he took a swim, careless of piranhas. He was usually the first man in the water. When he floated on his back, he reminded Rondon of “a great, fat fish which had come to the surface.”
Immersion in no way affected Roosevelt’s cheerful volubility. “I never saw a man who talked so much,” Rondon marveled. “I used to love to watch him think … for he always gesticulated. He would be alone, not saying a word, yet his hands would be moving, and he would be waving his arms and nodding his head with the greatest determination, as though arguing with somebody else.”
The best that could be said for portages was that each of them represented a further, if slight, descent into the Amazon basin. And the Dúvida’s steady trend a little east of the sixtieth meridian (every sigmoid curve to the left counterbalanced by another to the right) was heartening: straight toward Manáos, exactly the destination all the principals dreamed of. This was of small consolation to the canoeiros, who had to paddle ten, sometimes twenty kilometers for every five of actual advance. So far, that amounted to less than half a degree of latitude, and a drop of not quite fifteen meters from José Bonifácio.
By midday on 14 March the yellow dugout was ready, and the expedition managed a four-hour run to its tenth camp. On the following morning, calamity struck. Kermit was leading the way as usual in his small, rather wobbly canoe, ballasted with a week’s supply of tinned rations and paddled by two strong black men, João and Simplício. His hunting dog, Trig, rode along. Rondon and Lyra trailed a few lengths behind, preparing for the first survey of the day. Roosevelt came next in the new boat. The only triangulation that interested him was that of the leaves of rubber trees onshore, which he noted grew in fans of three.
A bend in the river disclosed yet another stretch of roaring water, with an island dividing it. The two lead canoes swerved and came to rest on the left bank. Rondon ordered Kermit to wait while he and Lyra walked down to see how far the rapids extended. After a while Kermit lost patience and told his men he wanted to look for a channel on the right side of the island. João, the helmsman, warned him that could be risky. The flow of water above the break looked gentle, but if they were caught in a rogue whirlpool, they might not have time to steer out of it. Kermit insisted on crossing over regardless. They reached the island with no difficulty. On their return, however, they were swept away, just as João had feared. Simplício, paddling frantically, aligned the canoe with the current before it hit the first fall.
The three men managed to stay aboard while it crashed all the way down, filling with water. Then another whirlpool engulfed them, and they were thrown out, along with Trig. The canoe spun into midstream and capsized. João swam ashore. Kermit and Simplício clambered onto the slippery keel, but seconds later, a further set of rapids dragged them under, with such force that Kermit’s helmet was beaten over his face. When he at last found himself in deep water, after six hundred yards of spins and somersaults, he was at the point of drowning. A branch overhanging from the left bank saved him, although he was almost too weak to pull himself ashore. To his amazement, Trig scuttled up after him. Simplício was nowhere to be seen.
All of this had happened below the sightline of the other principals.