It was hard for him to understand—­the man-beast back there, sending the canoe through the water, and under him his mother, warm and soft, but so deadly still!  He could not keep the whimper out of his throat—­his low and grief-filled call for her.  And there was no answer, except Miki’s responsive whine, the crying of one child for another.  Neewa’s mother did not move.  She made no sound.  And he could see nothing of her but her black and furry skin—­without head, without feet, without the big, bald paws he had loved to tickle, and the ears he had loved to nip.  There was nothing of her but the patch of black skin—­and the smell.

But a great comfort warmed his frightened little soul.  He felt the protecting nearness of an unconquerable and abiding force and in the first of the warm sunshine his back fluffed up, and he thrust his brown nose between his paws and into his mother’s fur.  Miki, as if vainly striving to solve the mystery of his new-found chum, was watching him closely from between his own fore-paws.  In his comical head—­adorned with its one good ear and its one bad one, and furthermore beautified by the outstanding whiskers inherited from his Airedale ancestor—­he was trying to come to some sort of an understanding.  At the outset he had accepted Neewa as a friend and a comrade—­and Neewa had thanklessly given him a good mauling for his trouble.  That much Miki could forgive and forget.  What he could not forgive was the utter lack of regard which Neewa seemed to possess for him.  His playful antics had gained no recognition from the cub.  When he had barked and hopped about, flattening and contorting himself in warm invitation for him to join in a game of tag or a wrestling match, Neewa had simply stared at him like an idiot.  He was wondering, perhaps, if Neewa would enjoy anything besides a fight.  It was a long time before he decided to make another experiment.

It was, as a matter of fact, halfway between breakfast and noon.  In all that time Neewa had scarcely moved, and Miki was finding himself bored to death.  The discomfort of last night’s storm was only a memory, and overhead there was a sun unshadowed by cloud.  More than an hour before Challoner’s canoe had left the lake, and was now in the clear-running water of a stream that was making its way down the southward slope of the divide between Jackson’s Knee and the Shamattawa.  It was a new stream to Challoner, fed by the large lake above, and guarding himself against the treachery of waterfall and rapid he kept a keen lookout ahead.  For a matter of half an hour the water had been growing steadily swifter, and Challoner was satisfied that before very long he would be compelled to make a portage.  A little later he heard ahead of him the low and steady murmur which told him he was approaching a danger zone.  As he shot around the next bend, hugging fairly close to shore, he saw, four or five hundred yards below him, a rock-frothed and boiling maelstrom of water.