“Trying,” said George without looking back. He was on the left-hand side, rowing hard. The river surface looked flat and sleek, but it was clear the currents were strengthening, and George was struggling to take the boat where he wanted it to go.

Within minutes, the river changed. The water started to foam and bubble around the rocks and boulders. The surface rippled and folded in on itself as the constant downward flow pulsed toward the barrier of the rapids. Despite that, Shen risked standing again, once more using Barney as a support, looking ahead to the shore.

He pointed, almost falling over in the process, and said, “Just before the rapids, there’s an open section, almost like a little beach.”

Alice called back, “You’ll have to direct us!”

“You need to move left ahead.” There was a boulder, bigger than the others, sticking up high out of the water. “But from there we can push for the right bank.”

He lowered himself down again and George and Alice took the raft around the boulder, but immediately struggled to control it as the current seemed to fling them downstream, gaining speed. And then there were more rocks ahead and the hiss and crash of the rapids themselves began to fill the air.

George rowed harder, so hard that Barney’s workmanship looked in danger of failing, the oar looking flimsier and more ragged each time it came out of the water. They moved right, but not enough. They’d picked up too much speed, the shore sliding past, just out of reach, the boat funneled relentlessly toward the rapids.

George shouted now, “We won’t make this!”

Emma looked at the bank and said, “But we’re so close!”

“We’re going too fast!”

He was right. The momentum was growing every second, pulling them on, the rapids frighteningly close now, looking increasingly unavoidable.

The bank, still dense with vegetation, was close enough that Tom probably could have thrown his backpack ashore, if not quite close enough to jump that distance himself. But he also understood why George and Alice were struggling to close down that gap, because the water was streaming past the side of the raft now, splashing up with the collision of speed and force.

Then Tom remembered the anchor. He pushed his backpack aside and grabbed it. Shen saw it at the same time and looked briefly undecided about the best thing to do with it.

Tom didn’t give him the chance but knelt against the back wall of the raft and shouted, “I’m throwing the anchor in!”

He got some response from the rowers, lost in the increasing noise around them, but as he got ready to throw it, Shen said, “You need to tie it off.”

“No time!”

He wrapped the end of the rope around his hand and threw the anchor into the water behind them, slipping his other hand into the grasp line that surrounded the raft.