Joe Lake turned his ear to the breeze.  A stronger puff brought a heavy, quivering rumble.  This time he did not vent his gay and wild defiance to the river.  He bent lower—­listened.  Then as the rumble became a strange, deep, reverberating roll, as if the monstrous river were rolling huge stones down a subterranean canyon, Shefford saw with dilating eyes that the Mormon’s hair was rising stiff upon his head.

“Hear that!” said Joe, turning an ashen face to Shefford.  “We’ll drop off the earth now.  Hang on to the girl, so if we go you can go together. . . .  And, pard, if you’ve a God—­pray!”

Nas Ta Bega faced the bend from whence that rumble came, and he was the same dark, inscrutable, impassive Indian as of old.  What was death to him?

Shefford felt the strong, rushing love of life surge in him, and it was not for himself he thought, but for Fay and the happiness she merited.  He went to her, patted the covered head, and tried with words choking in his throat to give hope.  And he leaned with hands gripping the gunwale, with eyes wide open, ready for the unknown.

The river made a quick turn and from round the bend rumbled a terrible uproar.  The current racing that way was divided or uncertain, and it gave strange motion to the boat.  Joe and Nas Ta Bega shoved desperately upon the oar, all to no purpose.  The currents had their will.  The bow of the boat took the place of the stern.  Then swift at the head of a curved incline it shot beyond the bulging wall.

And Shefford saw an awful place before them.  The canyon had narrowed to half its width, and turned almost at right angles.  The huge clamor of appalling sound came from under the cliff where the swollen river had to pass and where there was not space.  The rapid rushed in gigantic swells right upon the wall, boomed against it, climbed and spread and fell away, to recede and gather new impetus, to leap madly on down the canyon.

Shefford went to his knees, clasped Fay, and Jane, too.  But facing this appalling thing he had to look.  Courage and despair came to him at the last.  This must be the end.  With long, buoyant swing the boat sailed down, shot over the first waves, was caught and lifted upon the great swell and impelled straight toward the cliff.  Huge whirlpools raced alongside, and from them came a horrible, engulfing roar.  Monstrous bulges rose on the other side.  All the stupendous power of that mighty river of downward-rushing silt swung the boat aloft, up and up, as the swell climbed the wall.  Shefford, with transfixed eyes and harrowed soul, watched the wet black wall.  It loomed down upon him.  The stern of the boat went high.  Then when the crash that meant doom seemed imminent the swell spread and fell back from the wall and the boat never struck at all.  By some miraculous chance it had been favored by a strange and momentary receding of the huge spent swell.  Then it slid back, was caught and whirled by the current into a red, frothy, up-flung rapids below.  Shefford bowed his head over.  Fay and saw no more, nor felt nor heard.  What seemed a long time after that the broken voice of the Mormon recalled him to his labors.