ing down the toboggan
slide of water toward the jutting granite ledge. The blanched bailer in
the stern could have touched it with his hand as the boat whipped around
the corner, clearing it by so small a margin that it seemed to him his
heart stood still.

Bruce's muscles turned to steel as he gripped the sweep handle for the
last mad rush. He looked the personification of human daring. The wind
blew his hair straight back. The joy of battle blazed in his eyes. His
face was alight with a reckless exultation. But powerful, fearless as he
was, it did not seem as though it were within the range of human skill
or possibilities to place a boat in that toboggan slide of water so that
it would cut the current diagonally, miss the rock nearest shore and
shoot across to miss the channel boulder and that yawning hole beneath.
But he did, though he skimmed the wide-mouthed well so close that the
bailer stared into its dark depths with bulging eyes.

The boat leaped in the spray below, but the worst was passed and Bruce
and his hind sweepman exchanged the swift smile of satisfaction which
men have for each other at such a time.

"Keep her steady--straight away." He had not dared yet to lift his eyes
to look behind save for that one glance.

"My God! they're comin' right together!"

The sharp cry from the hind sweepman made him turn. They had rounded the
ledge abreast and Smaltz's boat inside was crowding Saunders hard.
Saunders and his helper were working with superhuman strength to throw
the boat into the outer channel in the fraction of time before it
started on the final shoot. Could they do it! could they! Bruce felt his
lungs--his heart--something inside him hurt with his sharp intake of
breath as he watched that desperate battle whose loss meant not only
sunk machinery but very likely death.

Bruce's hands were still full getting his own boat to safety. He dared
not look too long behind.

"They're goin' to make it! They're almost through! They're safe!"
Then--shrilly--"They're gone! they've lost a sweep."

Bruce turned quickly at his helper's cry of consternation, turned to see
the hind-sweep wildly threshing the air while the boat spun around and
around in the boiling water, disappearing, reappearing, sinking a little
lower with each plunge. Then, at the risk of having every rib crushed
in, they saw the bailer throw his body across the sweep and hold it down
before it quite leaped from its pin. The hind-sweepman wa