The bank was almost five feet high, which made it...
The bank was almost five feet high, which made it difficult to advanceThe men moved along with their bodies parallel to the wet clay walls of the bank, their eyes on a level with the jungle floorThey extended their arms, caught a root, and pulled themselves toward it, their chests scraping against the bank, their feet drudging through the waterTheir hands and faces became scratched, their fatigue uniforms covered with mudFor perhaps ten minutes they progressed in this way
The river leveled again, and they advanced in file a few feet from the bank, toiling slowly through the river mudAt times aware of the intricate liquid rustlings of the brush, the screams of the birds and animals, the murmuring of the river, they were usually conscious only of their own parched sobsThey were becoming very tiredThe weaker men in the platoon had lost the first sensitive control of their limbs and wavered in the current or floundered in one place for many seconds at a time, buckling to their knees from the weight of their packs
They came to another rapids which was too rocky, louis vuitton mahina too swift, to be crossed on footCroft and Hearn discussed it for a minute, and then Croft clambered up the bank with Brown, hacked his way a few feet into the brush, and cut some thick vines which he tied together with large square knotsHe started to tie one end about his waist"I'm gonna take it across, Lootenant," he said
Hearn shook his headCroft, effectively had been leading the patrol until now, but this was something he could do himself"I'll take a whack at it, Sergeant
Hearn fastened the vine about his belt, and stepped out into the rapidsHe was planning to carry the vine upstream, across to the other bank, where it could provide a life rope for the platoonBut it was much more difficult than he had expectedHearn had left his pack and carbine with Croft, yet even unfettered the crossing was exceptionally demandingHe waded through the rapids, stumbling from rock to rock, slipping to his knees many timesOnce he went under completely, rammed his shoulder against one of the stones, and came up gasping for air, faint from the painIt took him almost three coco chanel handbags minutes to move fifty yards and when he reached the other bank he was exhaustedFor thirty seconds he remained motionless, panting and coughing from the water he had swallowedThen he stood up, 466
lashed the vine about a tree, while Brown tied the other end to the roots of a sturdy bush
Croft was the first one across, carrying Hearn's pack and carbine besides his ownSlowly, one by one, the men struggled across the river, holding to the vineSome of them lopped their pack straps about it, and pulled themselves along hand over hand, their legs thrashing in the surf of the rapids or floundering anxiously to fend themselves off the rocksThe water would have reached only to their thighs if they had been able to stand upright, but all of them were drenched by the time they reached the other bankThey collected in a little eddy ahead of the rapids, and sat in the water panting, enervated for the moment
"Jesus," one of them would mutter from time to timeThe force of the rapids had been terrifyingEach of them as he had negotiated the line had expected secretly that he would chanel bags collection be drowned
After a rest of ten minutes they began to march againThere were no more rapids for a time but the river was flowing down a chain of stone ledges, and every ten or fifteen yards they would have to climb a waist-high shelf, tread forward cautiously along a rock platform over which a few inches of water was flowing, and then scramble up to the next ledgeAlmost all of them wet their guns at one time or another, and their grenades, wedged by the spoon handle into their cartridge belts, kept spilling out into the waterEvery few seconds one of them would swear dully
The river became narrowerIn some places the banks were not more than five yards apart, and the jungle overhead grew so close to the water that it brushed against their facesThey continued on for a quarter of a mile, squatting under the foliage and bellying over the ledgesCrossing the rapids had drained them, and most of the men were too weary to lift their legsWhen they came to a new shelf of rock, they flopped their bodies over the edge and slid their legs up behind them with the motions of rolex watches for women salmon laboring upstream for the spawning seasonThe river was dividing into its tributaries; every hundred yards a rill or tiny brook would trickle out of the jungle, and Croft would halt, examine it for a moment, and then move on againAfter his solo across the rapids, Hearn had been content to let Croft manage the platoon again for a timeHe plodded behind with the others, still unable to regain his wind
They came to a junction where the stream divided in twoIn the jungle, unable to see the sun, it was impossible for anyone but Martinez or him to know in what direction they were travelingCroft had noticed earlier that the larger trees leaned toward the northwest; he had checked it with his compass, and decided they had been wrenched that way in a hurricane when they were youngHe accepted it as a reliable guide, and all that morning as they had moved up the river he had been noting the direction in which they marchedHe guessed that they must be very close to the end of the jungle; they had walked more than three miles, and the river generally had moved toward the omega watch replica hi