On investigation I found Al Phillipps was anxious to go to the Gulf, and would go along if I would wait until he got his boat in shape.  This would take two days.  Phillipps, as he told me himself, was a Jayhawker who had left the farm in Kansas and had gone to sea for two years.  He was a cowboy, but had worked a year or two about mining engines.  In Yuma he was a carpenter, but was anxious to leave and go prospecting along the Gulf.  Phillipps and I were sure to have an interesting time.  He spoke Spanish and did not fear any of the previously mentioned so-called dangers; he had heard of one party being carried out to sea when the tide rushed out of the river, but as we would have low tide he thought that, with caution, we could avoid that.

At last all was ready for the momentous trial.  The river bank was lined with a crowd of men who seemed to have plenty of leisure.  Some long-haired Yuma Indians, and red and green turbaned Papagos, gathered in a group off a little to one side.  A number of darkies were fishing for bullheads, and boys of three colors besides the Mexicans and a lone Chinaman clambered over the trees and the boats along the shore.

It was a moment of suspense for Phillipps.  His reputation as an engineer and a constructor of boats hung in the balance.  He also had some original ideas about a rudder which had been incorporated in this boat.  Now was his chance to test them out, and his hour of triumph if they worked.

The test was a rigid one.  The boat was to be turned upstream against an eight-mile current with big sand-waves, beginning about sixty feet from the shore, running in the middle of the river.  If the engine ran, and the stern paddle-wheel turned, his reputation was saved.  If she was powerful enough to go against the current, it was a triumph and we would start for the Gulf at once.

On board were Phillipps, a volunteer, and myself.  Before turning the boat loose, the engine was tried.  It was a success.  The paddle-wheel churned the water at a great rate, sending the boat upstream as far as the ropes would let her go.  We would try a preliminary run in the quiet water close to the shore, before making the test in the swift current.  The order was given to cast off, and for two men, the owner and another, to hold to the ropes and follow on the shore.  The engine was started, the paddle-wheel revolved, slowly at first but gathering speed with each revolution.  We began to move gently, then faster, so that the men on shore had difficulty in keeping even with us, impeded as they were with bushes and sloping banks.  Flushed with success, the order was given to turn her loose, and we gathered in the ropes.  Now we were drifting away from the shore and making some headway against the swift current.  The crowd on shore was left behind.