e river, having risen long before daylight to be first at the
sport.

The riffles were full of salmon, big, lusty fellows, who glided about
the canoe on every side in an endless silver stream. Waukewa plunged his
spear right and left, and tossed one glittering victim after another
into the bark canoe. So absorbed in the sport was he that for once he
did not notice when the head of the rapids was reached and the canoe
began to glide more swiftly among the rocks. But suddenly he looked up,
caught his paddle, and dipped it wildly in the swirling water. The canoe
swung sidewise, shivered, held its own against the torrent, and then
slowly, inch by inch, began to creep upstream toward the shore. But
suddenly there was a loud, cruel snap, and the paddle parted in the
boy's hands, broken just above the blade! Waukewa gave a cry of
despairing agony. Then he bent to the gunwale of his canoe and with the
shattered blade fought desperately against the current. But it was
useless. The racing torrent swept him downward; the hungry falls roared
tauntingly in his ears.

Then the Indian boy knelt calmly upright in the canoe, facing the mist
of the falls, and folded his arms. His young face was stern and lofty.
He had lived like a brave hitherto--now he would die like one.

Faster and faster sped the doomed canoe toward the great cataract. The
black rocks glided away on either side like phantoms. The roar of the
terrible waters became like thunder in the boy's ears. But still he
gazed calmly and sternly ahead, facing his fate as a brave Indian
should. At last he began to chant the death-song, which he had learned
from the older braves. In a few moments all would be over. But he would
come before the Great Spirit with a fearless hymn upon his lips.

Suddenly a shadow fell across the canoe. Waukewa lifted his eyes and saw
a great eagle hovering over, with dangling legs, and a spread of wings
that blotted out the sun. Once more the eyes of the Indian boy and the
eagle met; and now it was the eagle who was master!

With a glad cry the Indian boy stood up in his canoe, and the eagle
hovered lower. Now the canoe tossed up on that great swelling wave that
climbs to the cataract's edge, and the boy lifted his hands and caught
the legs of the eagle. The next moment he looked down into the awful
gulf of waters from its very verge. The canoe was snatched from beneath
him and plunged down the black wall of the cataract; but he and the
strugglin