We threw logs in and watched their action.  In each case they paused when within five or six feet of the top of the slope, then returned with the current, whirled back to the side and shot through close to the shore.  We planned to go through as close together as possible.  Emery was ready first, I held back in a protecting pool, waiting for him to get out of the way.  He got his position, facing stern downstream, gave the slightest shove forward, and the released boat whizzed down for fifty feet and ran up on the rock.  She paused a moment, as the water prepared to return.  He gave two quick pulls, shooting back again, slightly to the right, until he struck the narrow channel, then reversed his course and went through stern first exactly as we had planned it.  The square stern, buoyed up by the air-chamber, lifted the boat out of the resulting wave as he struck the bottom of the descent.  This much of the rapid had only taken a few seconds.

I followed at once, but was not so fortunate.  The Defiance was carried to the left side, where some water dropped over the side of the rock, instead of reversing.  I pulled frantically, seeing visions, meanwhile, of the boat and myself being toppled off the side of the rock, into the boulders and waves below.  My rowing had no effect whatever, but the boat was grabbed by the returning wave and shot, as if from a catapult, back and around to the right, through the sloping narrow channel,—­my returning course describing a half circle.  Instead of rising, the pointed bow cut down into the waves until the water was on my shoulders.  Emery turned his head for an instant to see what success I was having, and his boat was thrown on to a rock close to the shore.  I passed him and landed, just before going into the next rapid.  I then went back and helped him off the rock, and he continued his course over the leaping waves.  He broke a rowlock before he landed, and had to use the substitute we had hung beside it.

We found a good spot for a camp just above the next rapid.  Our tent was stretched in front of a large boulder.  A large pile of driftwood gave us all the fuel needed, and we soon had a big fire going and our wet clothes steaming on the line.

CHAPTER XIV

A PATIENT AMID THE CATARACTS

An hour or so after making our camp, we began to doubt the wisdom of our choice of a location, for a downpour of rain threatened to send a stream of water under the tent.  The stream was easily turned aside, while a door and numerous boards found in the drift pile, made a very good floor for the tent and lifted our sleeping bags off the wet sand.  We had little trouble in this section to find sufficient driftwood for fires.  The pile at this camp was enormous, and had evidently been gathering for years.  Some of it, we could be sure, was recent, for a large pumpkin was found deposited in the drift pile twenty-five feet above the low-water stage on which we were travelling.  This pumpkin, of course, could only have come down on the flood that had preceded us.