It came down in savage tumult between the rocks, whose heads just showed above the foam, and its banks were further cumbered by a whitened driftwood frieze over which the men must clamber warily, clawing for a foothold on the great battered trunks, or smashing through a tangle of brittle limbs.  At times they were stopped altogether by a maze of washed-up timber no man could struggle through, and the axes were plied for an hour or more before they went on again.

The second day was like the first one, though their toil was if anything more arduous still, and on the evening of the fourth they came, worn out, dripping, and dejected, to a spot where the valley narrowed in.  A strip of forest divided the rock from the river on the opposite shore, but between them and it a confusion of froth and foam swirled down, while the hillsides seemed to vibrate with the roar of the rapid.  One glance sufficed to show that the crossing was wholly impossible for either beast or man.  On their side of the river a wall of rock hemmed the little party in, and even Seaforth wondered, while Okanagan growled half-aloud, when Alton, knee-deep in water, plodded steadily on.  There was not more than another hour’s daylight, and Seaforth remembered that the gorge extended for a league or so, while the flood had spread across it in front of them, but he knew his comrade and said nothing.  Presently he slipped from a boulder, and sank almost shoulder-deep in a whirling pool, but somebody grabbed his arm, and after a breathless flounder he felt the shingle under him and the froth lapped only to his knee.  Then they crawled amidst the driftwood which washed up and down beneath them, tearing garments and lacerating limbs, until they stood once more panting on dry shingle, with a broad stretch of froth before them, and the light growing dim.

The river had spread from side to side of the constricted valley, and the crash of the ice it brought down rang hollowly from rock to rock until it was lost high up amidst the climbing pines.  It seemed to Seaforth that to go on was impossible, and he glanced at his comrade anxiously, Alton stood alone upon a driftwood trunk, his figure silhouetted in rigid outline against the whiteness of the foam, for his drenched garments clung in sodden folds to every curve of it.  His face was as immobile in its wet grimness save for the smouldering glow in his eyes, and there was a low growl of half-articulate expostulation from those about him as he turned and pointed to the river.

“What are you stopping for?  The silver’s yonder, and there’s our road,” he said.