The first flight down which the boat glanced was a long one.  The river bed sloped away in a straight direction for nigh on to fifty rods, and at an angle so steep that the water, although the bottom was rough, fairly flattened itself as it ran; and the channel where the current was the deepest gave forth a serpentine sound as it whizzed downward.  The smoke, which hung heavily over the stretch from shore to shore, was too dense for the eye to penetrate a yard.  Amid the smoke sparks floated, and brands, crackling as they fell, plunged through it into the steaming water.  Guidance of the frail craft was, as the trapper had predicted, out of the question; the two men could only keep their position as they went streaming downward.  They kept their seats like statues, knowing well that their safety lay in allowing their light shell to follow, without the least interruption, the pressure of the swift current.

Half down the flight the volume of smoke was parted, by some freak of the wind, from shore to shore, and for a couple of rods they saw the water, the blazing banks, the fiery tree-tops and each other.  The trapper turned his face, blackened and stained by the grimy cinders, toward his companion and gave one glance, in which humor and excitement were equally mingled.  His mouth was open, but the words were lost in the roar of the flame and the rush of the water.  He had barely time to toss a hand upward, as if by gesture he would make good the impossibility of speech, before face and hand alike faded from Herbert’s eyes as the boat plunged again into the smoke.

The next instant the boat launched down the final pitch of the declivity and shot far out into the smooth water that eddied in a huge circle in the pool below.  The smoke was at this point less compact, for through it the blazing pines on either flamed partially into view.

“It’s the devil’s own work, boy, for sartin,” cried the trapper, “and the fool or the knave that started the fire oughter be toasted.  I trust the pups will be reasonable and come down with the current.  Has the fire touched ye anywhere?”

“Not much,” answered Herbert.  “A brand struck me on the shoulder and opened a hole in my shirt,—­that’s all.  How do you feel?”

“Fried, boy; yis, actally fried.  Ef this infarnal heat lasts, I’ll be ready to turn afore we reach the second bend.”

“How goes the stream below?” asked Herbert.

“All clear for a while,” answered the trapper, “all clear for a while.  Put yer strength into the paddle till we come to the varge below, for the fire be runnin’ fast, and it’s agin reason for a mortal to stand this heat long.”

“Shall we run out of the smoke at the next flight?” asked Herbert.

“I think so, boy; I think so,” answered the trapper.  “The maples grow to the bank at the foot of the next dip, and it isn’t in the natur’ of hard wood to make smoke like a balsam.”

[Illustration:  “Past mossy banks where great eddies whirled.”]