I have said that she impressed me at first sight as being quite capable of nosing the Rock of Gibraltar out of her way. This optimistic estimate was not borne out. That little patch of cliff was not high enough to make a respectable footstool for the guardian of the Mediterranean, but it must have been quite as firmly socketed in the earth. So far as I could see it budged never the breadth of a hair when the _Mule_, driving at all of fifteen miles an hour, crashed into it with the shattering force of a battering-ram. Indeed, everything considered, it speaks a lot for her construction that she simply telescoped instead of resolving into cosmic star-dust. Even the telescoping was not quite complete. Although there were a number of loose planks and timbers floating in her wake, the hashed mass of wood that backed soddenly away from the cliff and off into the middle of the current again had still a certain seeming of a boat--that is, to one who knew what it was intended for in the first place. With every plank started or missing, however, water had entered at a score of places, so that all the buoyancy she retained was that of floating wood. The _Mule_ had ceased to be a boat and become a raft, but not a raft constructed on scientific principles. The one most desirable characteristic of a properly built raft of logs is its stability. It is almost impossible to upset. The remains of the _Mule_ had about as much stability as a toe-dancer, and all of the capriciousness. She kept more or less right side up on to the head of the next riffle and then laid down and negotiated the undulating waves by rolling. It was not until some years later, if I remember aright, that stout women adopted the expedient of rolling to reduce weight. The _Mule_ was evidently well in advance of the times, for she reduced both weight and bulk by all of a quarter in that one series of rolls. I myself, after she had spilled me out at the head of the riffle, rode through on one of her planks, but it was a railroad tie, with a big spike in it, that rasped me over the ear in the whirlpool at the foot. And so I went on through to the foot of "Yankee Jim's Canyon." In the smoother water I clung to a tie, plank or the thinning remnants of the _Mule_ herself. At the riffles, to avoid another clout on the head from the spike-fanged flotsam, I found it best to swim ahead and flounder through on my own. I was not in serious trouble at any time, for much the worst of the rapids had been those at the head of the Canyon. Had I been really hard put for it, there were a dozen places at which I could have crawled out. As that would have made overtaking the _Mule_ again somewhat problematical, I was reluctant to do it. Also, no doubt, I was influenced by the fear that Jim and the Gingham Girl might call me a quitter.