The conflagration was now at its fiercest heat.  The smoke whirled upward in mighty eddies or rolled along in huge convolutions.  Through the fleecy rolls here and there tongues of flame shot fiercely.  The river steamed.  The roar of the rushing flames was deafening.  The tops of the huge pines that stood along the banks would wave and toss as the fiery line reached them, and then burst into blaze, as if they were but the mighty torches that lighted the path of the passing destruction.  In all his long and eventful life, passed amid peril, it is doubtful if the trapper had ever been in a wilder scene.  The rapids were ahead and the fire behind and on either side.  The great mass of flame had not yet rolled abreast the boat, but the blazing brands were already falling in advance.  It was not a moment to hesitate; nor was he a man to falter when action was called for.

By this time the boat had come nigh the upper rift of the rapids, and the motion of the downward suction was beginning to tell on its progress.  The trapper shipped his oars and, lifting his paddle, placed himself in a kneeling posture, gazing down stream.  The fire was almost upon them, and the smoke too dense for sight.  But pressing as was the emergency, neither man touched his paddle to the water, but let the boat go down with the quickening current to the verge of the rapids, where the sharp dip of the decline would send it flying.

“This be an onsartin ventur’, Henry,” cried the trapper, shouting to his comrade from the smoke that now made it impossible for the young man, even at only the boat’s length, to see his person.  “This be an onsartin ventur’, and the Lord only knows how it will eend.  Ye know the waters as well as I do; and ye know the p’ints where things must be did right.  We’ll beat the smoke arter we make the fust dip and git out of the thickest of it in the fust half of the distance, onless somethin’ happens.  Let her go with the current, boy, ontil yer sight comes to ye, for the current knows where it’s goin’, and that’s more than a mortal can tell in this infarnal smoke.  Here we go, boy!” shouted the old man, as the boat balanced in its perilous flight on the sharp edge of the uppermost rift.  “Here we go, boy!” he shouted out of the smoke and the rush of waters, “it’s hotter than Tophet where we be and it matters mighty leetle what meets us below.”

II

To those who have had no experience in running rapids, no adequate conception can be given touching what can with truth be called one of the most exciting experiences that man can pass through.  The very velocity with which the flight is made is enough of itself to make the sensation startling.  The skill which is required on the part of the boatman is of the finest order.  Eye and hand and readiest wit must work in swift connection.  Some who read these lines perhaps have—­shall we say—­enjoyed the sensation which we have always found impossible to describe in words?  These, at least, will appreciate the difficulty of our task, and also the peril which surrounded the trapper and his companion.