All being now ready to proceed George said:  “We will get in around the point, Mrs. Hubbard.”

I wondered why, and concluded it must be because the water was so swift at the point.  I still wondered why George did not stay to help Job; for as all their conversations were carried on in Indian, I was in darkness as to what was to happen.  In silence I waited for developments.  A little distance above the point, near where the water was deeper and not so swift, I looked back, and to my astonishment I saw Job poling the canoe through the swift water alone.  But this was mild surprise compared with what was awaiting me.

We were soon in the canoe, and for nearly half a mile they poled up the swift current.  The water was deep, and sometimes they bent over the poles till their hands dipped into the water.  It seemed as if they must certainly fall overboard.  I expected every minute to find myself perforce taking a header into the deep water.  Sometimes we brushed the edge of a big ice-bank.  The moment the poles were lifted the canoe stopped its forward movement, and if they were not quickly set again it began to slip back with the current.  At last the water became too shallow and rough and we went ashore.  Here the portaging began, and I climbed up over the ice-banks and walked along the shore.  Even while ice and snow lingered, the flowers were beginning to bloom, and I found two tiny blue violets.  On reaching the deepest part of the bay I turned to look back.  Job was bringing one of the canoes up the rapid with two full portage loads in it.  I could scarcely believe what I saw, and ran eagerly down to secure a photograph of this wonderful feat.  But my powers of astonishment reached their limit when later I saw him calmly bringing the canoe round the bend at the foot of Mount Sawyer and up into the narrower part of the river.  Now I was not alone in my wonder.  Both George and Joe watched with interest equal to mine, for even they had never seen a canoeman pole in water so rough.

Job looked as if in his element.  The wilder the rapid the more he seemed to enjoy it.  He would stand in the stern of the canoe, right foot back, left forward with leg against the thwart, with set pole holding it steady in the rushing, roaring water while he looked the way over, choosing out his course.  Then he would move the canoe forward again, twisting its nose now this way, now that, in the most marvellous fashion, and when he drove it into the rush of water pouring round a big rock the pole would bend and tremble with the weight and strain he put upon it.  Sometimes I could hardly breathe while watching him.  After taking one canoe some distance above the bend he went back for the second, and all the remainder of the afternoon Job climbed hills of water in the canoes.