their inboard ends bound in a flash firmly round the mast close down to
the deck, washed by the great waves of the rapid, just in front of the
'midships pole through which I breathlessly watch proceedings. I want to
feel again the sensation. The captain, in essentially the Chinese way,
is engaging a crew of demon-faced trackers to haul her over. Pouring
towards the boat, in a fever of excitement that rises higher every
moment, the natural elements of hunger and constant struggle against the
great river swell their fury; they bellow like wild beasts, _they are
like beasts_, for they have known nothing but struggle all their lives;
they have always, since they were tiny children, been fighting this
roaring water monster--they know none else. And now, as I say, they
bellow like beasts, each man ravenously eager to be among the number
chosen to earn a few cash.[D] The arrangement at last is made, and the
discordant hubbub, instead of lessening, grows more and more deafening.
It is a miserable, desperate, wholly panic-stricken crowd that then
harnesses up with their great hooks joined to a rough waist-belt, with
which they connect themselves to the straining tow-lines.

And now her nose is put into the teeth of this trough of treachery--a
veritable boiling cauldron, stirring up all past mysteries. Waves rush
furiously towards us, with the growl of a thousand demons, whose anger
is only swelled by the thousands of miles of her course from far-away
Tibet. It seems as if they must instantly devour her, and that we must
now go under to swell the number of their victims. But they only beat
her back, for she rides gracefully, faltering timidly with frightened
creaks and groans, whilst the waters shiver her frail bulwarks with
their cruel message of destruction, which might mean her very
death-rattle. I get landed in the stomach with the end of a gigantic
bamboo boat-hook, used by one of the men standing in the bows whose duty
is to fend her off the rocks. He falls towards the river. I grab his