My guess is that the colonel’s men intercept fishermen and traders on the river and take whatever they want, including the old dugouts themselves. Our canoe must have belonged to a poultry vendor, who butchered his birds right on the bow. The other canoes in our group look equally decrepit. Something tells me we are being sent off into the wilds of the Amazon with the oldest, flimsiest, and leakiest vessels in the colonel’s fleet.

I have no idea how I will steer this rudderless log downriver with only a flattened pole to paddle with, but Ernesto comes to my rescue. The self-declared governor general of the free and wild Amazon quietly takes control of the situation. He assigns the weakest of the prisoners to ride with the strongest, and the most experienced native paddlers to help the clueless settlers and city dwellers. P.J. and I fall into that last category, so Ernesto directs the Korubo chief himself to our canoe.

The chief has undergone a transformation. His eyes are alive now, his very skin seems to be waking up. He jumps into our dugout and pushes off strongly from the mud bank, and soon we are in the lead position, gliding swiftly downriver. Eko taught me to paddle a kayak on the Outer Banks, so even with the flattened pole I’m able to generate some power as he steers expertly from the back.

The colonel’s compound extends for more than a mile and we pass impressive military fortifications and docks with gunboats. Then the river narrows, and a metal gate runs from bank to bank. At the bottleneck, two soldiers stand outside a concrete guard station. One cradles an enormous rocket launcher in his arms as lovingly as if it were a newborn. I get the feeling he’d like nothing better than to pick off our canoes for target practice.

We slow down as we approach the gate, till we’re barely moving. The second soldier raises a cell phone and whispers a few words. Then he disappears into the guard station. A minute later we hear the whirring of electronic controls and the metal gate lifts like a drawbridge.

We paddle under it, and the current stiffens and sweeps us downriver. Soon the metal gate is just a pinprick of gleaming light against the lush background. When it vanishes behind a leafy curve in the bank, and the roof of the guard station sinks out of sight, I hear whooping and clapping and one Indian man breaks into song.

I understand their joy. “We made it,” I whisper to P.J., turning to take her hand. “Now we’re free.”

She looks at me. I still have great trouble believing we’re actually here together, in the Amazon. But it’s undeniably P.J. in the flesh, barely two feet from me, in a fast-moving canoe, her long auburn hair trailing in the breeze.