er channel, Saunders," said Bruce briefly, "the
water's hardly up enough for that."

"I don't believe we could make it," Saunders answered; "it's too long a
chance."

Smaltz was studying the rocks and current intently, as though to impress
upon his mind every twist and turn. His face was serious but he made no
comment and walked back in silence to the eddy above where the boats
were tied.

It was the only rapid where they had stopped to "look out the trail
ahead," but a peculiarity of the Big Mallard was that the channel
changed with the varying stages of the water and it was too dangerous at
any stage to trust to luck.

It was a stretch of water not easy to describe. Words seem
colorless--inadequate to convey the picture it presented or the sense of
awe it inspired. Looking at it from among the boulders on the shore it
seemed the last degree of madness for human beings to pit their
Lilliputian strength against that racing, thundering flood. Certain it
was that The Big Mallard was the supreme test of courage and
boatmanship.

The river, running like a mill-race, shot straight and smooth down grade
until it reached a high, sharp, jutting ledge of granite, where it made
a sharp turn. The main current made a close swirl and then fairly
leaping took a sudden rush for a narrow passageway between two great
boulders, one of which rose close to shore and the other nearer the
centre of the river. The latter being covered thinly with a sheet of
water which shot over it to drop into a dark hole like a well, rising
again to strike another rock immediately below and curve back. For three
hundred yards or more the river seethed and boiled, a stretch of roaring
whiteness, as though its growing fury had culminated in this foaming fit
of rage, and from it came uncanny sounds like children crying, women
screaming.

Bruce's eyes were shining brilliantly with the excitement of the
desperate game ahead when he put into the river, but nothing could
exceed the carefulness, the caution with which he worked his boat out of
the eddy so that when the current caught it it should catch it right.
Watching the landmarks on either shore, measuring distances, calculating
the consequences of each stroke, he placed the clumsy barge where he
would have it, with all the accurate skill of a good billiard player
making a shot.

The boat reached the edge of the current; then it caught it full. With a
jump like a race-horse at the signal it was shoot