THE DAY we got rid of the boy, during Old Pebble’s time for a noon bowl of rice, I came on him mending a parrel, a small collar of bamboo rope which held the crude iron snatch-ring for the towing hawser against the mast, and which was therefore a vital bit of gear; I had seen him change parrels every day and check the ones he removed for chafing and splinters. What struck me now was the affectionate care with which he worked. He had a shell of callus on his palms, so that it was almost a wonder that he could make a fist at all: his fingers were all as thick as my thumbs—yet he drew out and replaced crushed strands of bamboo from the braid and fed in fresh lengths with the care and precision of a surgeon, and if the new strand did not lie absolutely flush with the rest, he would take it out and shave off a few delicate fibers with a tiny knife and thread the filament in again. Workmanship! All my life since then I have watched for such love of perfection in men who work with their hands. I would have lost my temper over that fussy work in no time, but the head tracker sat there repeating and repeating the same tiresome act with something that was more than patience—with what was evidently a true love for the thing he had in his hands and was shaping with his hands. He looked at the mellow golden collar as he might have looked into a woman’s eyes, and as if to say, “You are the most beautiful parrel I have ever seen, and because I take good care of you, you would hold a junk in the tongue of a rapids for ten thousand running days for my sake, would you not?”

“That’s good-looking,” I said, pointing at the parrel, and I meant to sound admiring, but my words were taken, I guess, for condescension.

“This thing is not to look at,” the head tracker, turning up his face in surprise, irritably said.

I felt that I had been misunderstood and that I must recover with a new compliment. “It’s good to be able to do such fine work with your hands,” I said, squatting down beside him.

The head tracker, like a small boy caught with dirty paws, thrust his hands behind him, out of my sight. “Not every man’s son can be a scholar or a merchant,” he said.

I was not so slow or naïve as to miss the force of that phrase “man’s son,” indicating that my privilege—having soft and useless hands—obviously could not be something I had earned myself.