The boat heeled gunwale under, and suddenly, but the bowman kept his feet like a Blondin, dropped the boat-hook, and jumped to unlash the halyard; a wave buried the boat nose under and swamped me in my kennel; my heart stopped beating, and, scared out of my wits, I began to strip off my sodden clothes; but before I had half done the sail had been set; both men had miraculously fended the boat from a rock, which, by a moment's hesitation, would have smashed us in bits or buried us in the boiling trough formed by the eddy below it, and, with another desperate effort, we had slid from danger into smooth water.
Then my men laughed heartily.

How it was done I do not know, but I felt keen admiration for the calm dexterity with which it had been done.
We baled the water out of the boat, paid out a second towrope--this one from the bow to keep the stern under control, the other being made fast to the mast, and took on board a licensed pilot.

Extra trackers, hired for a few cash, laid hold of both towlines, and bodily--the water swelling and foaming under our bows--the boat was hauled against the torrent, and up the ledge of water that stretches across the river.

We were now in smooth water at the entrance to the Mi Tsang Gorge.

Two stupendous walls of rock, almost perpendicular, as bold and rugged as the Mediterranean side of the Rock of Gibraltar seem folded one behind the other across the river.