Half an hour later the three went to their canoe.  Mukoki had already packed a half of its contents to the river, a quarter of a mile away, and he now loaded himself with the remainder while the two boys hoisted the light birch upon their shoulders.  As Roderick caught his first glimpse of the Ombabika in the growing light of day he gave a cry of astonishment.  When he had gone up the stream the preceding winter it was scarce more than a dozen gun lengths in width.  Now it was a veritable Amazon, its black, ugly waters rolling and twisting like the slow boiling of a thick liquid over a fire.  There was little rush about it, no frenzied haste, no mountain-like madness in the advance of the torrent.  Rod had expected to see this, and he would not have been startled by it.

But there was something vastly more appalling in the flood that rolled slowly before his eyes, with its lazily twisting whirlpools, its thousand unseen currents, rolling the water here and there—­always in different places—­like the gurgling eruptions he had often observed in a pot of simmering oatmeal.  There was something uncanny about it, something terribly suggestive of giant hands under the surface, waiting to pull them down.  He knew, without questioning, that there was more deadly power in that creeping flood than in a dozen boisterous torrents thundering down from the mountains.  In it were the cumulative waters of a score of those torrents, and in its broad, deep sweep into the big lake the currents and perils of each were combined into one great threatening force.

The thoughts that were in Rod’s mind betrayed themselves as he looked at his companions.  Mukoki was reloading the canoe.  Wabi watched the flood.

“She’s running pretty strong,” said the Indian youth dubiously.  “What do you think of it, Muky?”

“Keep close to shore,” replied the old warrior, without stopping his work.  “We mak’ heem—­safe!”

There was a good deal of consolation in Mukoki’s words, for both youths still bore smarting reminders of his caution and good judgment.  In a short time the canoe was safely launched where a small eddy had worked into the shore, and the three adventurers dug in their paddles.  Mukoki, who held the important position in the stern, kept the bow of the birch within half a dozen yards of the bank, and to Rod’s mind they slipped up-stream with amazing speed and ease.  Now and then one of the upheavings of the currents would catch the canoe, and from the way in which it was pitched either to one side or the other Rod easily imagined what perils the middle of the stream would have held for them.  Quick action on the part of Mukoki and Wabigoon was always necessary to counteract the effect of these upheavals, and in the bow Wabi was constantly on the alert.  At no time could they tell when to expect the attacks of the unseen forces below.  Ten feet ahead the water might be running as smooth as oil, then—­a single huge bubble, as if a great fish had sent up a gasp of air—­and in an instant it would be boiling like a small maelstrom.