(Concluded from last week.)
Soon of or pissing the cite of Kueichou, approached the famous Windbox gorge The sun had shipped away behind the hills, but the moon shone witha goat grace. The cockle-shell of a pant in which we riy assumed a nervous giddiness, and began spinning like atop. We float" into. a whirlpool, and we whirled like a bark demented. Frothy, gurgling eddies broke all around, 'The oarsmen dashed the blades ragingly, furiously, and with mucic splashing into' the by water. We sat "holding on the unused rowlocks, Fired of the game, the whirlpod shut the boat away. We reached a mid torrent, With a dull roar it tonk us in its arms and raced. Five hundred yards abend loomed the slaty sides of a gaunt precipice. In front of it was a massive boulder, wiiers the water hissed and soothed, and was thrown into snowy spray. We drove straight at this jutting dispenser of death. Were we to be splintered on its: ragged fringe? "Like wu arrow we fle. Another fifteen seconds and our doom wns sealed. But the rush of the tumultuous street was cleft. Just us we reached the rock one arm seized the boat, and with " frightful,, twisted, uncanny motion, that caused tight and forget to breathe, shut far into smoother water. We wore safe, and gliding with silent swiftness down the gorge. The rocks were perpendicular, and showed dark crevices. Que sile ws rapt in Cimmerian blackness. The other was illumined by the thin blue rays of th" moon, The wars were still; not a night i en the ripples forgot to very unearth y, vene. must be like that when Charon takes his. cargo of souls across the Styx.
Shooting the rapids, however, had nothing of the mysterious about it. 'Every' now and theti we had, five minutes of uadiluted exch 6 rocks ran' into: the river hed, and with " horrific noise, the Yangtze blastered angrily, with much swearing and epluttering, into-a narrower course. Then a stubborn rock from the other. bank would press forward. And when the rush of tie two currents inet there ws a tremendous uproar. Shipping water, thumped, bumped, banged about, our tiny vessel braved the flood time and again, Ths worst rapid was one called the Yehtan, Far in front we saw a big junk having a-fight. with the waves. It was swing ud groaning in a fearful ma"ner.
ines quite three hundred men were on the bank, tugging with all rheic strength, ani yelling with all rheic lungs. But all such noise was soon swallowed up in the thunderous bellowing of wild wave tumbling in the wake of wilder wave—a pandemonium of mighty, crashing water. Our Chinese crew screeched like madmen. The boat fell with a thud into the trough of the waves and shuddered. The spray flew high as in gale. We held on with iron grip.
At nights we generally slipped into some lazy back-water, threw the painter round a rock and have to. A fire was kindled and the food was cooked, and we lolled about andatein wild-man style, attacking anything that happened to be ready, and not following the prescribed methods. Then when the mat'ainings'were pulled out and the
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