I was struck at the very outset by a new sound in Old Pebble’s voice as he sang the tracking songs. There was a note of urgency in it, a kind of straining, it seemed to me, that I had not heard before. I saw that as Old Pebble worked he was forever looking this way and that, now at the slick river, now at the pale-gray mountains, now back at the junk at the end of the towline.

The owner ran forward and shouted to the drummer, commanding him to signal Old Pebble to reduce the tempo of his song, because the trackers, the Old Big cried, would need their greatest strength farther upstream and must save it here. On his way aft the owner muttered that Old Pebble knew the river; what was wrong with him this morning?

Above that first slick plane the river was violent and erratic, like a frightened thing that runs this way and that, uncertain where to make its final rush. Sometimes the trackers took a whole minute to gather strength for a new six-inch step; then suddenly the up-curve of a whirlpool would seize the junk, and for ten paces the men would actually have to hurry to keep the hawser tight. So we faltered and started and slowly persisted upstream.

I had never felt the junk shiver so hard or heard it creak so loud. All the time the tiny bells at the masthead jingled.

—

AT THAT phase of water in the river, fast rising toward mid-level, approaching the period of real danger, the upper and lower ends of Wind-Box Gorge were its severe passages, and between, for nearly four miles, there was a haul which was, as much of Witches’ Mountain Gorge had been, awesome but not deadly fearful. Once we had budged through the lower gate, with the swift slope and then the stretch of vicious chopping currents, we went forward moderately well; which is not to say that we entirely escaped the surprises, some of them very offensive, of strong oversets, whirlpools, races, and eddies.

When we moved into this middle section of the gorge, Su-ling went into the after-cabin and fetched the wooden gaming board and the inlaid sandalwood box of “stones,” and she engaged the owner in play on the conning deck; this seemed to be his opium, for he indulged in it a lot during the tense passages of the river. Having been given lessons in the game, I was permitted now to sit by and watch. Whenever the junk suffered a bad lurch or sheared away from shore or seemed stuck in the water for good, whenever we felt the most unpleasant sensations of dipping, swaying, and yawing, whenever we heard the most importunate ringing of the masthead bells, the owner rose to his feet in one of his passing furies, rushed forward, shouted as if to the cliffs and skies, and soon came back looking quite happy.