The murderous Preacher is chasing two small children through the dark night with a knife, on the steep banks of the Ohio River. He aims to kill them, so he can steal the money her daddy hid inside little Pearl's doll. Desperate to get away, Little John, the hero of the book, is onto Preacher. He is pulling Pearl down to the riverbank to escape in their father's rowboat, which he calls a "skiff."

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"John is scrambling down the bank, pulling Pearl behind him, knowing Preacher is right behind them with his knife, His feet slipped and sucked in the mud, and the weeds tore at his legs as he led her, stumbling, on toward the boat, but Preacher had heard them, and now his sweet tenor voice called after them. 

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John said, "Hurry, Pearl! Oh Godamighty, please hurry, Pearl!"

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"You said a cuss word, John. That's a sin!" He thought desperately, staring into a great patch of mist. Maybe the skiff is gone. Maybe one of them shantryboat trash borrowed it tonight.

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"John, where - "

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"Hush! Hush!  Hurry, Pearl!"  Then he spied it, the bow jutting sharply in the blanketing white. And Pearl, yawning now, in a perfect picture of a child bored with a stupid game, hugged the doll, Jenny, and fought her way wearily through the ooze to the skiff.

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"Children! Children!" They could hear him above them, thrashing down through the high brush filth, fighting his way toward them. 

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"Get in the skiff, Pearl! Oh Godamighty, hurry!"

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"CHILDREN!"

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"John," she cried out, pausing. "That's Daddy, calling us!" 

 

He uttered a sob of despair and thrust her brutally over the skiff side and down among the bait cans and fish heads in the bottom. Now they heard Preacher hacking at a vine that had entangled him. John knew well what it was he hacked with, and in an instant he was free again, thrashing down through the brush, not ten feet away.

 

But they were in the boat now, and John's hand grappled for the oar, the way poor Uncle Bertie had shown him that day  and the way he had watched men do it since the first time he had seen the river. But they moved not an inch in the muck, so tightly was the skiff grounded.

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"Ah, my lambs! So there you are!"

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John thrusted and strained against the oar until the flesh of his hands tore under the wood's ragged grain, and the boat moved. And he bore down again, straining with every ounce of flesh and bone, and it moved again.

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But now Preacher had cleared the brush filth and was stepping swiftly through the mud toward them. John gave a final thrust that nigh-burst his heart, and the skiff swung suddenly into the gentle current.

 

"Wait! Wait! Wait you little bastards Wait! Wait! Wait!  Damn you to hell!"

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Even in that faint show of midnight, even with the mist whisping and curling against the land, they could see the livid twisted, raging oval of his face, the mouth gaping and sick with hatred. Now he wallowed rapidly toward them through the shallows. the bright, open blade sinking in his fist. And then he staggered and slipped and fell, floundering in the water for a moment, then rising again, he splashed after them.

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John bore back on the oak in the lock, and the blade skimmed the water ineffectually. And he thought, "Why can't I do it when I know how to do it? Please let me do it, please!" And he bore back again, and the blade bit hard into the stream, and the boat swung erratically like a leaf.

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"Wait! Wait! Wait! Damn you to hell!" And now some errant current in the vast, dark river caught them up on its own wing, and the boat began moving, blessedly moving, spinning at first, like a mad October leaf, and then heading into the channel, while still they could hear Preacher, every sound drifting flat and sharp across the dark water.

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He was back on shore now, where he could follow better, clawing his way down through the brush filth, through sumac and pokeberry, cursing and shouting amid that wiry jungle of the river's shore. But now they were moving beyond him. They were free."

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