Having given this brief word of caution, we will continue our narrative in the more sober style befitting a grave and discreet chronicler. We had expected to find the rest of our companions awaiting us at the appointed place of meeting; but they did not make their appearance till the next morning, when we at once set about making the necessary preparations for putting the machine in operation.
From one to two hundred pounds of shot were required to overcome the buoyancy of the armour; and as this could not be obtained nearer than Coloma, Allen started alone on this errand, leaving to the rest of us the work of constructing a raft. Incredible as it may seem, the preliminary operations necessary to this simple undertaking occupied us a whole week; the only trees fit for the purpose grew high up on the mountain, and when we had at last succeeded in felling them, the still more arduous task remained of getting them safely down to the river's brink. The easiest and most natural method was to set them in motion by crowbars and long levers, when their own momentum would without any further trouble on our part carry them crashing down the steep; but besides the danger of losing them altogether by their plunging into the river, their ungovernable rage and impetuosity would, in case of their striking any sufficient obstacle, dash them into a hundred pieces. We were accordingly compelled to proceed with the utmost caution, and let them down gradually by a rope passed once or twice round a tree, in the same way that whalemen check the fierce flight of _their_ victim in his frenzied efforts to escape.
This being at length accomplished, we proceeded to throw them into the river, when one after another, as fast as they reached the water, sunk like a stone beneath the surface, and settling cosily side by side at the bottom, left us staring at each other with a ludicrous mixture of amazement and indignation. Greater amaze could hardly have seized the followers of the pious Eneas when their ships threatened with hostile flames plunged goddesses of the sea beneath the waves. There was no time to be lost, however, in useless lamentation; and finding by this decisive experiment that live timber knew too much to swim, we immediately commenced a search for some drier and more stupid material. Some distance above our claim we found lodged among the jagged rocks where it had been left by some previous freshet, a mighty pine bleached as dry and white as the thigh bone of some antediluvian monster. Its spongy elastic fibre long set at defiance our united efforts, but having at last cut it into logs of a convenient length, we rolled them into the water, and guided them down the river by long ropes, the rapidity of the current rendering the task as difficult as the steepness of the hill had done before, and often threatening to wrest the log entirely from our control.