Separated from my brother in this instance, I had an opportunity to see the man and water conflict, with a perspective much as it would have appeared to a spectator happening on the scene.  I was out of the heat of the battle.  The excitement and indifference to danger that comes with a hand-to-hand grapple was gone.  I heard the roar of the rapid; a roar so often heard that we forgot it was there.  I saw the gloom of the great gorge, and the towering, sinister shafts of rock, weakened with cracks, waiting for the moment that would send them crashing to the bottom.  I saw the mad, wild water hurled at the curving wall.  Jagged rocks, like the bared fangs of some dream-monster, appeared now and then in the leaping, tumbling waves.  Then down toward the turmoil—­dwarfed to nothingness by the magnitude of the walls—­sped the tiny shell-like boat, running smoothly like a racing machine!  There was no rowing.  The oar-blades were tipped high to avoid loss in the first comber; then the boat was buried in foam, and staggered through on the other side.  It was buffeted here and there, now covered with a ton of water, now topping a ten-foot wave.  Like a skilled boxer—­quick of eye, and ready to seize any temporary advantage—­the oarsman shot in his oars for two quick strokes, to straighten the boat with the current or dodge a threatening boulder; then covered by lifting his oars and ducking his head as a brown flood rolled over him.  Time and again the manoeuvre was repeated:  now here now there.  One would think the chances were about one to a hundred that he would get through.  But by some sort of a system, undoubtedly aided, many times, by good luck, the man and his boat won to land.

After running a small rapid, we came to another, in the centre of which was an island,—­the last rapid in Cataract Canyon.  While not as bad as the one at Dark Canyon it was rather difficult, and at this point we found no shore on either side.  The south side was rendered impassable by great boulders, much higher than the river level, which were scattered through the channel.  The opposite channel began much like the rapid at Dark Canyon, sweeping under the wall until turned by a bend and many fallen rocks below the end of the island, then crossed with a line of cresting waves to the opposite side, where it was joined by the other stream, and the left wall was swept clean in like manner.  We ran it by letting our boats drop into the stream, but pulled away from the wall and kept close to the island, then when its end was reached crossed the ridge of waves and pulled for the right-hand shore.  In such rapids as this we often found the line of waves in the swift-rushing centre to be several feet higher than the water along the shore.