Drawing Too Deep

An unheard-of cold has come down on the Sorrel River: frost on the lianas, the jungle gone silent, the dusk air so still your breath hangs where you leave it. You are the pilot of the paddle-steamer Verlaine, and half an hour ago she ran her bow gently onto a sandbar she has cleared a hundred times — because she is riding half a foot deeper forward than her manifest says she should. The river is dropping with the cold, an inch since noon, and if she isn't off the bar by full dark she will winter here with the season's fever-bark undelivered. Somewhere aboard, something weighs more than it admits.