wolves around the
bones of a banquet, the embers of our fire were watching each other over
the ashes; we had but to knock their heads together and fiery fighting
began. The skirmish of the brands boiled our coffee and fried our pork,
and we embarked and shoved off. A thin blue smoke, floating upward, for
an hour or two, marked our bivouac; soon this had gone out, and the
banks and braes of Ragmuff were lonely as if never a biped had trodden
them. Nature drops back to solitude as easily as man to peace;--how
little this fair globe would miss mankind!

The Penobscot was all asteam with morning mist. It was blinding the sun
with a matinal oblation of incense. A crew of the profane should not
interfere with such act of worship. Sacrilege is perilous, whoever be
the God. We were instantly punished for irreverence. The first "rips"
came up-stream under cover of the mist, and took us by surprise. As we
were paddling along gently, we suddenly found ourselves in the midst of
a boiling rapid. Gnashing rocks, with cruel foam upon their lips, sprang
out of the obscure, eager to tear us. Great jaws of ugly blackness
snapped about us as if we were introduced into a coterie of crocodiles.
Symplegades clanged together behind; mighty gulfs, below seducing bends
of smooth water, awaited us before. We were in for it. We spun, whizzed,
dashed, leaped, "cavorted;" we did whatever a birch running the gantlet
of whirlpools and breakers may do, except the fatal finality of a
somerset. That we escaped, and only escaped. We had been only reckless,
not audacious; and therefore peril, not punishment, befell us. The rocks
smote our frail shallop; they did not crush it. Foam and spray dashed in
our faces; solid fluid below the crest did not overwhelm us. There we
were, presently, in water tumultuous, but not frantic. There we were,
three men floating in a birch, not floundering in a maelstrom,--on the
water, not under it,--sprinkled, not drowned,--and in a wild wonder how
we got into it and how we got out of it.

Cancut's paddle guided us through. Unwieldy he may have been in person,
but he could wield his weapon well. And so, by luck and skill, we were
not drowned in the magnificent uproar of the rapid. Success, that
strange stirabout of Providence, accident, and courage, were ours. But
when we came to the next cascading bit, though the mist had now lifted,
we lightened the canoe by two men's avoir-dupois, that it might dance,
and not blunder hea