The river carries us swiftly toward the sheer canyon wall below the rapid, on the left. Jane still seems a bit dazed like the rest of us, unaware of her danger. Rich pulls himself onto the flat bottom of the boat and drags her up with him. The boat crunches into the rock. Sound of splintering plywood. The weight of the current forces down the upstream side of the boat, pushing me and Renée underwater again. Down in the darkness I let go of the boat’s lifeline and kick away.

After what seems an unnecessarily long time I rise to the surface, gasping for air. A wave splashes in my face. Good God I’m drowning, I think, choking on a windpipe full of muddy water. Instinctively I swim toward shore and find myself caught in a big eddy, pulled in a circle by the swirling current. Where’s Renée? I see the boat go sailing past, upside down, three people crawling on it, none of them my wife. The eddy carries me close to the wall and I make a futile effort to find a handhold on the glossy, polished stone. I give up and let the eddy carry me down again, toward a tumble of broken rock fallen from the wall. I succeed in getting onto the rocks and stand up, free of the hungry river at last. Renée? I hear her calling me. Ah, there she is, below me on an adjoining shelf of rock. Reunited, we stand on our island in the stream and watch Rich, Jane, Jenny and the capsized dory float away, getting smaller and smaller. We’ve forgotten for the moment that there are six other dories still up the river. We are relaxing into a foolish despair, feeling abandoned, when good old John Blaustein—none other!—comes charging through The Great Wave, spots us, rows close enough for rescue. With six soaked passengers aboard, he rows hard after Rich and catches him. Rich is having trouble righting his boat. Not enough weight. John and I assist, pulling on the flip lines, and the boat comes over right side up again. Transfer of bodies, the restoration of our original order.

Rich rows, Renée and Jane and I bail. We open the hatches—not quite watertight after all—and bail them out too. Resting at last, we finally become aware of how chilled we are, through and through. Nobody timed it but we must have been immersed in that frigid water for a considerable spell. Even the sun seems slow in bringing warmth back to our bones.

That evening in camp, as Rich patches up his injured dory with glue and yards of duct tape, it dawns on me why the boatmen sometimes refer to the major rapids as Christian Falls. Why? Because they make a believer out of you.

IN THE MORNING the river is low. John looks grim. I check the rock. High and dry, and the river dropping slowly.

Breakfast is finished. We load the dories. Some of the boatmen are concerned that their boats are too light, since most of the food is gone. They place large rocks in the bottom of the hatches for ballast. The extra weight down low may help at Mile 179.