The angry talk subsided; a chill fell on the group; all were appalled—I more than any of them, I believe, for I had wanted to believe Old Pebble when he had told me that the only thing that mattered to him was friendship. Yet the other men on the junk did not seem to hold this frightful gesture against the head tracker for long; within an hour they were all merrily laughing and comradely together over some nauseating white rice brandy, called pai-chia-erh, and Old Pebble seemed to be regarded as the best fellow of all.

—

I SAT UP, looking at the view. I felt much better but pretended to be weak. Su-ling told me that the gorge we were entering had a curious name, Ox-Liver Horse-Lungs Gorge, and with a small whole hand she pointed at some stalactites, high up on the face of a cliff at the entrance door of the defile, which could be imagined to have the shapes of animal entrails; from these, she said, the unromantic place-name derived. The Old Big, as the trackers called the owner, sat on his haunches outside the door of his cabin, sucking at a hubble-bubble pipe and mostly occupied with tending it, occasionally nodding and smiling benignly at me, for he seemed satisfied with the instruction I was getting.

The morning was such as to give us pure delight. The sky was of a rich blue, softly streaked with veins of mist, so that it seemed alive, as if it were one enormous perfect over-arching petal of the universe. The mountains on either side of the river threw up red and dun and black and green masses against the blue, shapes of infinite variety, mystery, and majesty. Into the still air smoke arose in straight pale-blue shafts from tiny villages set high on the ramparts of the gorge. Here and there a plum tree or a cherry tree stood dressed in full blossom, a breathtaking immobilized explosion of color against a dark hillside. A whited pagoda, like a hand-carved object of ivory, was set on a headland at the top of the gorge. We were enveloped by sounds: the bird-world’s praise of April, Old Pebble’s whole-tone melodies and the boom of the trackers’ drum, Su-ling’s gentle murmuring laughter, the liquid music of the owner’s pipe, and the endless whispered story of the Great River’s swirling waters. The cook was frying vegetables, forward, and now and then a halo of pungent, appetizing fragrance hung about my head. I felt a marvelous, thrilling, full-blooded keenness of the senses—not just the quickening of life that comes with recovery from an illness, but something more, a feeling of peacefulness, well-being, and optimism.

I remember with startling vividness a few moments from that morning, moments of a wonderful sun-bathed clarity, in which nothing of life-changing importance took place, but which contained, for me, as I remember them, marvels and miracles of sight and sound and smell.