Part 30 (2/2)

The roar that followed was deafening. The sheet of water that broke over the boat for an instant shut out the sun. Then she came up like a clumsy Newfoundland, with the water streaming from the platform and swis.h.i.+ng through the machinery, and all on board drenched to the skin.

Bruce stood at his post unshaken, throwing his great strength on the sweep this way and that--endeavoring to keep it in the centre of the current--in the middle of the tortuous channel through which the boat was racing like mad. And the hind-sweepman, doing his part, responded, with all the weight of body and strength he possessed, to Bruce's low-voiced orders almost before they had left his lips.

Quick and tremendous action was imperative for there were places where a single instant's tardiness meant destruction. There was no time in that mad rush to rectify mistakes. A miscalculation, a stroke of the sweep too little or too much, would send the heavily loaded boat with that tremendous, terrifying force behind it, cras.h.i.+ng and splintering on a rock like a flimsy-bottomed strawberry box.

For all of seven miles Bruce never lifted his eyes, straining them as he wielded his sweep for the deceptive, submerged granite boulders over which the water slid in a thin sheet. Immovable, tense, he steered with the sureness of knowledge and grim determination until the boat ceased to leap and ahead lay a little stretch of peace.

Then he turned and looked at the lolling tongues behind him that seemed still reaching for the boat and straightening up he shook his fist:

”You didn't get me that time, dog-gone you, and what's more you won't!”

All three boats were coming, rearing and plunging, disappearing and reappearing. Anxiously he watched Smaltz work until a bend of the river shut them all from sight. It was many miles before the river straightened out again but when it did he saw them all riding safely, with Smaltz holding his place in line.

Stretches of white water came at frequent intervals all day but Bruce slept on the platform of his barge that night more soundly than he ever had dared hope. Each hour that pa.s.sed, each rapid that they put behind them, was so much done; he was so much nearer his goal.

On the second night when they tied up, with the Devil's Teeth, the Black Canyon and the Whiplash pa.s.sed in safety, Bruce felt almost secure, although the rapid that he dreaded most remained for the third and last day.

The boatmen stood, a silent group, at The Big Mallard. ”She's a bad one, boys--and looking wicked as I've ever seen her.” There was a furrow of anxiety between Bruce's heavy brows.

Every grave face was a shade paler and Porcupine Jim's eyes looked like two blue b.u.t.tons sewed on white paper as he stared.

”I wish I was back in Meennyso-ta.” The unimaginative Swede's voice was plaintive.

”We dare not risk the other channel, Saunders,” said Bruce briefly, ”the water's hardly up enough for that.”

”I don't believe we could make it,” Saunders answered; ”it's too long a chance.”

Smaltz was studying the rocks and current intently, as though to impress upon his mind every twist and turn. His face was serious but he made no comment and walked back in silence to the eddy above where the boats were tied.

It was the only rapid where they had stopped to ”look out the trail ahead,” but a peculiarity of the Big Mallard was that the channel changed with the varying stages of the water and it was too dangerous at any stage to trust to luck.

It was a stretch of water not easy to describe. Words seem colorless--inadequate to convey the picture it presented or the sense of awe it inspired. Looking at it from among the boulders on the sh.o.r.e it seemed the last degree of madness for human beings to pit their Lilliputian strength against that racing, thundering flood. Certain it was that The Big Mallard was the supreme test of courage and boatmans.h.i.+p.

The river, running like a mill-race, shot straight and smooth down grade until it reached a high, sharp, jutting ledge of granite, where it made a sharp turn. The main current made a close swirl and then fairly leaping took a sudden rush for a narrow pa.s.sageway between two great boulders, one of which rose close to sh.o.r.e and the other nearer the centre of the river. The latter being covered thinly with a sheet of water which shot over it to drop into a dark hole like a well, rising again to strike another rock immediately below and curve back. For three hundred yards or more the river seethed and boiled, a stretch of roaring whiteness, as though its growing fury had culminated in this foaming fit of rage, and from it came uncanny sounds like children crying, women screaming.

Bruce's eyes were s.h.i.+ning brilliantly with the excitement of the desperate game ahead when he put into the river, but nothing could exceed the carefulness, the caution with which he worked his boat out of the eddy so that when the current caught it it should catch it right.

Watching the landmarks on either sh.o.r.e, measuring distances, calculating the consequences of each stroke, he placed the clumsy barge where he would have it, with all the accurate skill of a good billiard player making a shot.

The boat reached the edge of the current; then it caught it full. With a jump like a race-horse at the signal it was shooting down the toboggan slide of water toward the jutting granite ledge. The blanched bailer in the stern could have touched it with his hand as the boat whipped around the corner, clearing it by so small a margin that it seemed to him his heart stood still.

Bruce's muscles turned to steel as he gripped the sweep handle for the last mad rush. He looked the personification of human daring. The wind blew his hair straight back. The joy of battle blazed in his eyes. His face was alight with a reckless exultation. But powerful, fearless as he was, it did not seem as though it were within the range of human skill or possibilities to place a boat in that toboggan slide of water so that it would cut the current diagonally, miss the rock nearest sh.o.r.e and shoot across to miss the channel boulder and that yawning hole beneath.

But he did, though he skimmed the wide-mouthed well so close that the bailer stared into its dark depths with bulging eyes.

The boat leaped in the spray below, but the worst was pa.s.sed and Bruce and his hind sweepman exchanged the swift smile of satisfaction which men have for each other at such a time.

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