For just as the breeze was failing I looked aft and there, coming up behind us, still holding the wind, was the whole fleet of Pongo canoes, thirty or forty of them perhaps, each carrying an average of about twenty men.

We sailed on for as long as we could, for though our progress was but slow, it was quicker than what we could have made by paddling.

Also it was necessary that we should save our strength for the last trial.
I remember that hour very well, for in the nervous excitement of it every little thing impressed itself upon my mind.

I remember even the shape of the clouds that floated over us, remnants of the storm of the previous night.

One was like a castle with a broken-down turret showing a staircase within; another had a fantastic resemblance to a wrecked ship with a hole in her starboard bow, two of her masts broken and one standing with some fragments of sails flapping from it, and so forth.
Then there was the general aspect of the great lake, especially at a spot where two currents met, causing little waves which seemed to fight with each other and fall backwards in curious curves.