The river was wild and swift here, but, after they had worked carefully and painfully out of the aftermath of the falls, the current was unobstructed for several hours.  All the morning, Jonas watched eagerly for traces of the Na-che but up to noon, none appeared.  The sky was cloudy, threatening rain.  The walls, now smooth, now broken by pinnacles and shoulders, were sad and gray in color.  Milton sometimes slept uneasily, but for the most part he lay with lips compressed, eyes on the gliding cliffs.

About an hour before noon, the familiar warning roar of rapids reached their ears.  Rounding a curve, carefully, they snubbed the Ida to a rock while Agnew clambered ashore for an observation.  Just below them a black wall appeared to cut at right angles across the river bed.  The river sweeping round the curve which the Ida had just compassed, rushed like the waters of a mill race against the unexpected obstacle and waves ten to twenty feet high told of the force of the meeting.  Agnew with great difficulty crawled along the shore until he could look down on this turmoil of waters.  Then, with infinite pains, he returned.

“It’s impossible to portage,” he reported, “but the waves simply fill the gorge for two hundred feet.”

“Tie me in the boat,” said Milton.  “The rest of you get out on the rocks and let the boat down with ropes.”

Agnew looked questioningly at Enoch, who shook his head.

“Agnew,” he said, “can you and Jonas manage to let the Ida down, with both Milton and me aboard?”

“No, sir, we can’t!” exclaimed Jonas.  “That ain’t to be thought of!”

“Right you are, Jonas!” agreed Agnew, while Milton nodded in agreement.

“Then,” said Enoch, “let’s land Milton and the loose dunnage on this rock, let the boat down, come back and carry Milton round.”

“It’s the only way,” agreed Agnew, “but I think we can take a hundred feet off the portage, if you fellows are willing to risk rowing down to a bench of rock below here.  You take the steering oar, Judge.  I’ll stay ashore and catch a rope from you at the bench.”

Cautiously, Jonas backing water and Enoch keeping the Ida almost scraping the shore, they made their way to the spot where Agnew caught the rope, throwing the whole weight of his body back against the pull of the boat, even then being almost dragged from the ledge.  Milton was lifted out as carefully as possible, the loose dunnage was piled beside him, then the three men, each with a rope attached to the Ida, began their difficult climb.

There was nothing that could be called a trail.  They made their way by clinging to projecting rocks, or stepping perilously from crack to crevice, from shelf to hollow.  The pull of the helpless Ida was tremendous, and they snubbed her wherever projecting rocks made this possible.  She danced dizzily from crest to crest of waves.  She slid helplessly into whirlpools, she twisted over and under and fought like a wild thing against the straining ropes.  But at the end of a half hour, she was moored in safe water, on a spit of sand on which a cotton wood grew.