This picture in my mind became unbearably exciting. I had to share it. I ran forward through the mat archway of the main cabin and beyond the mast found Su-ling, perched on a capstan with folded legs, and the head tracker and the cook, squatting on the deck before her. They were talking in low voices.

I tried to tell them what I had seen in my mind.

They must have thought at first that I was quite mad, perhaps from fear of the Great River’s churning waters. I stood there, flushed and eager-eyed, I suppose, pointing at the site and trying to build my dam again out of Chinese words and gestures, and trying to convey to them an idea of the miracles of power, irrigation, flood-control, and navigation that this lovely structure would have produced; especially of navigation, for I thought that would appeal to them. No rapids, no whirlpools, no currents, no pilots, no tracking! I was carried away and felt sure they would understand me.

The response I got was a horrifying one.

Old Pebble stood up. I was surprised to see that he was in a fury—though his anger was in check, like a line under tension belayed to a cleat.

Then I saw Su-ling look at the head tracker with an expression of great anxiety, and afterwards she turned her eyes on me in dismay, and her glance made me feel an utter fool. What had I done?

Then I remembered her warning not to speak to Old Pebble about changing the Great River. I felt hot all over.

I looked at Old Pebble again. He stood as straight and stiff as a stanchion. I expected violence.

He gave me worse than that. He turned with calm arrogance toward Su-ling and the cook and began to talk as if I had not been there in a different dialect of Chinese—Hunanese, perhaps—of which I could understand not a syllable. I had the impression he was going straight forward with the conversation the three of them had been enjoying before I had rushed in with my crazy arm-waving interruption, and it was more than an impression, it was a patent fact, that with this change of language he had simply obliterated me. I had a body, I stood on the deck, I breathed still a little hard from the thrill I had had, I was able to see him move his mouth and the others nod, laugh, and blink; but I did not exist. I was not merely foreign. I was wiped out.

—