ry them beside our bridge trestles
and under tons of shattered rock, and, perhaps, when their time comes,
some of them aren't sorry to have done with it. Anyway, they've stood
up to man's primeval task."

He rose with another half-deprecatory laugh, but his eyes snapped.
"You don't talk like that in your country--it would hurt some of
you--but if we spread ourselves now and then, you can look round and
see the things we do." Then he touched Nasmyth's shoulder. "Oh, yes,
you understand--for somebody has taught you--and by-and-by, you're
going to feel the thing getting hold of you."

He moved towards the doorway, but turned as he reached it. "Talking's
cheap, and I have several dozen blamed big firs to saw up, as well as
Waynefleet's tonic to mix. He'll come along for it when that prick I
gave him commences to heal."

CHAPTER X

THE CALLING CANON

There were four wet and weary men in the Siwash canoe that Nasmyth,
who crouched astern, had just shot across the whirling pool with the
back feathering stroke of his paddle which is so difficult to acquire.
Tom from Mattawa, grasping a dripping pole, stood up in the bow.
Gordon and Wheeler, the pulp-mill manager, knelt in the middle of the
boat. Wheeler's hands were blistered from gripping the paddle-haft,
and his knees were raw, where he had pressed them against the bottom
of the craft to obtain a purchase. It was several years since he had
undertaken any severe manual labour, though he was by no means unused
to it, and he was cramped and aching in every limb. He had plied pole
or paddle for eight hours, during which his companions had painfully
propelled the craft a few miles into the canyon. He gasped with relief
when Mattawa ran the bow of the canoe in upon the shingle, and then
rose and stretched himself wearily. The four men stepped ashore.
Curiously they looked about them, for they had had little opportunity
for observation. Those who undertake to pole a canoe up the rapids of
a river on the Pacific slope usually find it advisable to confine
their attention strictly to the business in hand.

Immediately in front of them the river roared and seethed amid giant
boulders, which rose out of a tumultuous rush of foam, but while it
was clearly beyond the power of flesh and blood to drive the canoe up
against the current, a strip of shingle, also strewn with boulders and
broken by ledges of dripping rock, divided the water from the wall of
the canyon. The canyon