From the distance sounds the ominous roar of the Big Cascade.  At quarter past four we reach the head of the swirling fall.  The underlying cause of the Big Cascade is a limestone ledge which cuts the channel diagonally and makes ugly-looking water.  We plan to run the rapid one boat at a time.  The crews are doubled.  Our steersman is alert, expectant, and as agile as a cat, his black hair switching in the wind.  Sitting in the centre of the scow, as we do, the sensation is very different to that which one experiences in running rapids in a canoe.  Then it is all swiftness and dexterity, for your craft is light, and, in expert hands, easily dirigible with one clever turn of the wrist.  With a ten-ton scow the conditions change and you feel correspondingly more helpless.

The great rapid stretches from shore to shore and the drop is sheer.  With much excitement, the bowsman points out the channel that seems to him the safe one.  No one speaks, and the big awkward craft is brought up for the jump.  It is an elephant drawing his feet together to take a water-fence.  For all we own in the world we wouldn’t be anywhere but just where we sit.  If it is going to be our last minute, well, Kismet! let it come.  At least it will not be a tame way of going out.  For the life of me I cannot forbear a cry of exultation.  Then there is the feeling below one’s feet which you experienced when you were a kiddie lying flat on your stomach coasting down a side-hill and your little red sled struck a stone.  We, too, have struck something, but do not stop to ask what the obstruction is.

[Illustration:  The Scow Breaks Her Back and Fills]

At the foot of the rapids, we hurry the boatmen ashore.  I want to photograph the next scow as she shoots the fall.  We reach a good vantage-point and, getting the coming craft in the finder, I have just time to notice that her passengers are Inspector Pelletier and Dr. Sussex, when a sharp crack rings out like the shot of a pistol.  Just as we touch the button, something happens.  We wanted a snap-shot, and it was a snap-shot we got.  The scow has broken her back and begins to fill.

The blue-and-white jerkin of Isadore Tremble, the pilot, dances in the sun as he gesticulates and directs his two passengers to crawl to the top of the boat’s freight.  In less time than it takes to write it, the men from our scow have launched the police canoes and make their way through the boiling water to take off Pelletier and the Doctor.  The Inspector says, “Step quick, Doctor, there’s no time to waste.”  The native politeness of Sussex doesn’t fail him, even in this crisis, “After you, Inspector.”  Then Pelletier says, sharply, “Jump, I tell you, jump; there’s no time for—­Gaston-and-Alphonse business here.”

As always, it is impossible to tell who directs affairs, but quickly things happen.  Lines are run from the wreck to the shore, other scows discharge their cargo on the bank and push out to take the water-logged goods from the wreck.  The lightened craft is pulled ashore.  There has been no loss of life, but it is a sorry-looking cargo that piles up on the bank,—­five thousand dollars’ worth of goods destroyed in three minutes!