It is my duty to record another adventure at this point, in which we all three shared, each in a different manner.  This time I am going to give my brother’s record of the happenings that overtook us about four o’clock in the afternoon of December the 24th, less than three hours after we left our friends at the Bass Trail with “best wishes for a Merry Christmas,” and had received instructions from John “to keep our feet dry”

My brother’s account follows: 

“The fourth rapid below the Bass Trail was bad, but after looking it over we decided it could be run.  We had taken chances in rapids that looked worse and came through unharmed; if we were successful here, it would be over in a few minutes, and forgotten an hour later.  So we each made the attempt.”

“Lauzon had gone near the lower end of the rapid, taking the left shore, for a sixty-foot wall with a sloping bench on top rose sheer out of the water on the right.  The only shore on the right was close to the head of the rapid, a small deposit or bank of earth and rock.  The inner gorge here was about nine hundred feet deep.”

“Ellsworth went first, taking the left-hand side.  I picked out a course on the right as being the least dangerous; but I was scarcely started when I found myself on a nest of jagged rocks, with violent water all about me, and with other rocks, some of them submerged, below me.  I climbed out on the rocks and held the boat.”

“If the others could land below the rapid and climb back, they might get a rope to me and pull me off the rocks far enough to give me a new start, but they could not pull the boat in to shore through the rough water.  A person thinks quickly under such circumstances, I had it all figured out as soon as I was on the rocks.  The greatest trouble would be to hold the boat if she broke loose.”

“Then I saw that the Defiance was in trouble.  She caught in a reverse whirl in the very middle of the pounding rapid, bouncing back and forth like a great rubber ball.  Finally she filled with the splashing water, sank low, and the water pouring over the rock caught the edge of the twelve-hundred pound boat and turned her over as if she were a toy; my brother was holding to the gunwale when she turned.  Still she was held in the whirl, jumping as violently as ever, then turned upright again and was forced out.  Ellsworth had disappeared, but came up nearly a hundred feet below, struggling to keep on top but going down with every breaking wave.  When the quieter water was reached, he did not seem to have strength enough to swim out, but floated, motionless, in a standing position, his head kept up by the life-preservers.  The next rapid was not over fifty yards below.  If he was to be saved it must be done instantly.”

“I pried the boat loose, jumped in as she swung clear, and pulled with all my might, headed toward the centre of the river.