Driscoll grumbled half aloud, but made no determined protest, and paddling hard they headed obliquely for the opposite bank.  As they forged through the glittering water the current swept them down and Thirlwell noted that it was running faster than he had thought.  The river was wide and the ragged pines got indistinct as they rolled back up stream.  It looked as if the canoe were standing still and the banks moving on, only that the gleaming spray-cloud got rapidly nearer.  It stretched across from bank to bank, and a dull roar that rose and fell came out of the wavering mist.  For the most part, the current was smooth, but here and there broken lines of foam streaked its surface, and sometimes the canoe swung round in revolving eddies.

Still the dark rocks ahead got nearer and at length Driscoll made a sign that they could stop paddling.  He occupied the stern, where he could steer the craft.  Thirlwell, feeling breathless after his efforts, was glad to stop, and looked about as he knelt in the middle.  He had often thought it was from the river one best marked the savage austerity of the wilderness.  In the bush, one’s view was broken by rocks and trunks, but from the wide expanse of water one could look across the belt of forest that ran back, desolate and silent, to Hudson Bay.  Here and there the hazy outline of a rocky height caught the eye, but for the most part, the landscape had no charm of varied beauty.  It was monotonous, somber, and forbidding.

The canoe was now thirty or forty yards from the rough bank, and drifting fast.  Driscoll obviously meant to land on a patch of shingle lower down, which was the only safe spot for some distance.  At low-water one could run a canoe aground among the ledges that bordered the slack inner edge of the rapid, but when the Shadow rose in flood the current broke and boiled furiously among the rocks.  One faces forward when paddling, and while Thirlwell watched the dark gaps in the pines open up and close he heard Driscoll shout.  Next moment Scott leaned over the bow and plunged his arm into the water.  It looked as if he had dropped his paddle and Thirlwell backed his in order to stop the craft.

The paddle floated past, too far off for Driscoll to reach, and signing to Thirlwell, he swung the canoe round, but the water was getting broken and they missed the paddle by a yard.  Then they drove her ahead in a semi-circle, and a minute or two had gone when Scott, leaning over cautiously, seized the paddle-haft.  In the meantime, they had drifted fast, and Thirlwell saw that that patch of shingle was now up stream.

“That’s awkward,” Scott remarked, and the canoe rocked as Driscoll dipped his paddle.

“Drive her!  You have got to make the beach,” he shouted in a hoarse voice.

There was something contagious in the man’s alarm, and knowing his physical courage, Thirlwell made his best effort.  The sweat ran down his face, he felt his muscles strain and his sinews crack, and the canoe’s bow lifted as the paddle-blades beat the water.  Driscoll leaned far forward to get a longer stroke and urged the others with breathless shouts, but the shingle they were heading for slowly slipped away.