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‘Yossi, get ready to push us off that rock with the pole,’ he said to me, as we rapidly approached a boulder. We all rowed. Marcus tried to push off from the rocks on the bottom. His pole snagged on one of them and was torn from his hands.

‘I’ve lost my pole!’ he cried. ‘I lost it!’

‘Mierda,’ Karl swore.

‘Here, take this pole.’

I handed our only spare pole to Marcus.

‘Get ready, Yossi . . . push!’ Karl cried.

I stuck the long pole out toward the rock that the raft was approaching. I pushed but didn’t have enough strength to prevent the collision. The raft took a severe blow and tilted up on its side for a moment, but then straightened out.

We were moving along again but no longer passing through smooth waters. Every few minutes we approached another rock, and Karl was on the verge of hysteria. We somehow managed to smash into every one of them but suffered no serious damage. I lost a pole, and Marcus lost his second one. Things weren’t looking so good. We finally managed to pull over to the shore.

‘We can’t go on like this,’ Karl said. ‘It’s terrify-ing. Not one of you has the vaguest idea how to handle a raft.’

‘Take it easy, Karl, take it easy,’ Kevin said. ‘Nobody learns how to do it in an hour. We’ll get more practice. We’ll catch on. Everything will be all right.’

‘This isn’t child’s play, Kevin,’ Karl retorted