faded gradually from Smaltz's
face.

Life preservers were dragged out within easy reach, the sweepmen
replaced their boots with rubber-soled canvas ties and cleared their
platform of every nail and splinter. When all were ready, Bruce swung
off his hat and laid both hands upon his sweep.

"Throw off the lines," he said quietly and his black eyes took on a
steady shine.

There was something creepy, portentous, in the seemingly deliberate
quietness with which the boat crept from the still water of the eddy
toward the channel.

The bailer in the stern changed color and no one spoke. There was an
occasional ripple against the side of the boat but save for that distant
roar no other sound broke the strained stillness. Bruce crouched over
his sweep like some huge cat, a cougar waiting to grapple with an enemy
as wily and as formidable as himself. The boat slipped forward with a
kind of stealth and then the current caught it.

Faster it moved, then faster and faster. The rocks and bushes at the
water's edge flew by. The sound was now a steady boom! boom! growing
louder with every heart-beat, until it was like the indescribable roar
of a cloudburst in a canyon--an avalanche of water dropping from a great
height.

The boat was racing now with a speed which made the flying rocks and
foliage along the shore a blur--racing toward a white stretch of
churning spray and foam that reached as far down the river as it was
possible to see. From the water which dashed itself to whiteness against
the rocks there still came the mighty boom! boom! which had put fear
into many a heart.

The barge was leaping toward it as though drawn by the invisible force
of some great suction pump. The hind sweepman gripped the handle of the
sweep until his knuckles went white and Bruce over his shoulder watched
the wild water with a jaw set and rigid.

The heavy barge seemed to pause for an instant on the edge of a
precipice with half her length in mid-air before her bow dropped heavily
into a curve of water that was like the hollow of a great green shell.
The roar that followed was deafening. The sheet of water that broke over
the boat for an instant shut out the sun. Then she came up like a clumsy
Newfoundland, with the water streaming from the platform and swishing
through the machinery, and all on board drenched to the skin.

Bruce stood at his post unshaken, throwing his great strength on the
sweep this way and that--endeavoring to keep it