Sect Year 4 · seventh month · day 2 · the switchbacks of Sallow Gap
The road went up Sallow Gap in five turns, each one cut into the hillside in a tight fold. The salt-train could not take the grade at a stroke. It climbed the first leg behind its oxen, halted at each turn, and let the lead car drop back on its drag-blocks. Meanwhile, the drovers ran a rope from the car to a winch bolted into the rock.
Then they hauled the car round the bend a yard at a time, and the next car followed, and the next. It was slow. Lin counted fourteen halts before they reached the third turn. At each one the air grew colder and thinner, and the wind off the sea came up the gap with a sound like a long breath let out.
He had been put on the winch at the second turn. The crank was an iron bar set into a drum of worn oak, and its handle had been shaped by a great many other hands. His right hand took it at the centre and turned it. The left hand closed on the handle halfway and stopped there, the way it always stopped, and it held only because the right hand was doing the work.
