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laziness of experienced boatmen. We pushed off into the current and, as we left the shore, I could not help feeling the whole thing had a rehearsed feel about it, although I would not have wanted to say so in front of the apparently angry crowd.
    Although fast, the river here was wide and smooth. The boat was carefully designed for its task, and the skill of the boatmen clearly honed by generations on the river. We skimmed diagonally across, slipping downstream as we did so, although only by some two hundred yards. How they planned to return was not immediately clear, but as we approached the opposite bank I could see that stout poles had been driven in upstream, trailing long ropes. The intention was clearer now: we would pull in to the bank further downriver than we had left the other bank, but by attaching the ropes and pulling on them, the boatmen could skim the empty craft back upriver in the shallows until it reached a higher point, where passengers wanting to travel in the opposite direction were already waiting.
    The scheme was clever and would work as long as the press of the flood was not so strong that we missed the lower mark, where the ropes were tied off.
    Skilled as the boatmen were, the flood was very strong, and as we approached the bank I could see that Thomas, like me, was judging the angle and measuring our progress against the end of the longest rope, which trailed in the water some twenty feet from the bank. As we swept past, Thomas leaned heavily over the side of the boat and grasped the knotted rope-end for all he was worth.
    His judgement was accurate and his strength sufficient, but against the momentum of a loaded boat his weight was insignificant, and with horror we saw him swiftly dragged over the side. The boat swung on and Thomas, now upstream from us, clung desperately to the rope. The boatmen pulled us safely on to a sandbank, but it was clear that Thomas’s strength was failing him and, worse, that the bow-wave his shoulders were making against the press of the river was preventing him from breathing. He was beginning to drown. There was a coil of thin rope lying beside me and, almost unthinking, I tied two turns around a stanchion and, yelling to Niccolò to hold the knot firmly, jumped over the side and ran waist-deep out along the sand spit into the edge of the torrent.
    ‘Thomas, let go; I am below you!’ I cried, and somehow he heard me.
    His arms flew upward as he let go and, released from the suffocating bow-wave, he sucked in one huge gulp of air. It was a matter of seconds before he reached me and I grabbed him savagely, taking the rope around his chest as I did so and clinging on to the roughness of his jerkin for dear life. We swung crazily into the bank and I felt my knees grate on the sharp gravel. Strong arms pulled us on to the sandspit and we lay, coughing, exhausted and frozen, as the icy water drained from us.
    Thomas rolled over and looked at Eckhardt, who was staring down at him uncertainly. There was blood running down the doctor’s face where the rope had grazed his forehead, and his hands were cut from gripping tightly on to his lifeline. He coughed, and brown river-water dribbled down his cheek. ‘I presume, then, we shall not be going by way of Basel?’
    Somehow the question did not seem to require an answer. The rest of us burst into relieved laughter.
    We had dry clothes in the carts and, without shyness, stripped naked on the river bank and donned them, in front of the queue of prospective return passengers, who clearly viewed our manner of arrival as a worrying advertisement for their own journey in the opposite direction.
       
     
    We were tired but relieved when, late that evening, we arrived at the inn in Rhinehouse. Over a large and well-earned dinner, accompanied by more of the local wine than was perhaps sensible, we reviewed the route ahead.
    Our next major resting point was revealed – we planned to travel through Pforzheim before turning east,