“Only one.”  He smiled, significantly, into her eyes.  Because she was a forest girl, unused to flattery, the warm color grew in her brown cheeks.  “And how was paddling?  The water looks still enough from here.”

“It’s not as still as it looks, but it is easy going for a half-mile each way.  If you aren’t an expert boatman, however—­I hardly think—­I’d try it.”

“Why not?  I’m fair enough with a canoe, of course—­but it looks safe as a lake.”

“But it isn’t.”  She paused.  “Listen with those keen ears of yours, Mr. Darby.  Don’t you hear anything?”

Ben did not need particularly keen ears to hear:  the far-off sound of surging waters reached him with entire clearness.  He nodded.

“That’s the reason,” the girl went on.  “If something should happen—­and you’d get carried around the bend—­a little farther than you meant to go—­you’d understand.  And we wouldn’t see any more of Mr. Darby around these parts.”

Her dark eyes, brimming with light and laughter, were on his face, but she failed to see him slowly stiffen to hide the sudden, wild leaping of his heart.  Could it be that he saw the far-off vision of his triumph?

His eyes glowed, and he fought off with difficulty a great preoccupation that seemed to be settling over him.

“Tell me about it,” he said at last, casually.  “I was thinking of making a boat and going down on a prospecting trip.”

“I’ll tell you about it, and then I think you’ll change your mind.  The first cataract is the one just above where we first saw the river—­coming in; then there’s this mile of quiet water.  From that point on the Yuga flows into a gorge—­or rather one gorge after another; and sometime they’ll likely be almost as famous as some of the great gorges of your country.  The walls are just about straight up on each side, and of course are absolutely impassable.  I don’t know how many miles the first gorge is—­but for nearly two hundred miles the river is considered impassable for boats.  Two hundred and fifty miles or so below there is an Indian village—­but they never try to go down the river from here.  A few white men, however, have tried to go down with canoe-loads of fur.”

“And all drowned?” Ben asked.

“All except one party.  Once two men went down when the river was high—­just as it is now.  They were good canoeists, and they made it through.  No one ever expected they would come out again.”

“And after you’ve once got into the rapids, there’s no getting out—­or landing?”

“Of course not.  I suppose there are places where you might get on the bank, but the gorge above is impassable.”

“You couldn’t follow the river down—­with horses?”