le the patch of sky
seemed no more than a narrow riband of blue very high above.

Fortunately, the river flowed smoothly between its barriers of stone,
and, sounding with two poles lashed together, the men got no bottom,
and as the river swept them on, they began to wonder uneasily how they
were to get back upstream. Once, indeed, Wheeler suggested something
of the kind, but none of the others answered him, and he went on with
his paddling.

At last a deep, pulsating roar that had been steadily growing louder,
swelled suddenly into a bewildering din, and Mattawa shouted as they
shot round a bend. There was a whirling haze of spray into which the
white rush of a rapid led close in front of them, and for the next
minute they paddled circumspectly. Then Mattawa ran the canoe in
between two boulders at the head of the rapid, and they got out and
stood almost knee-deep in the cold water. The whirling haze of spray
which rose and sank was rent now and then as the cold breeze swept
more strongly down the canyon, and it became evident that the rapid was
a very short one. The walls of rock stood further apart at this point,
and there was a strip of thinly-covered shingle and boulders between
the fierce white rush of the flood and the worn stone. Mattawa grinned
as the others looked at him.

"I'm staying here to hang on to the canoe," he said. "Guess you don't
feel quite like going down that fall."

They certainly did not, and they hesitated a moment until Nasmyth
suddenly moved forward.

"We came here to look at the fall, and I'm going on," he said.

They went with him, stumbling over the shingle, and now and then
floundering among the boulders, with the stream that frothed about
their thighs almost dragging their feet from under them. Each of them
gasped with sincere relief when he scrambled out of the whirling pool.
They reached a strip of uncovered rock that stretched across part of
the wider hollow above the fall, and stood there drenched and
shivering for several minutes, scarcely caring to speak as they gazed
at the channel which the stream had cut through the midst of it.
Wheeler dropped his hand on Nasmyth's shoulder.

"Well," he said--and Nasmyth could just hear him through the roar of
the fall--"it seems to me the thing could be done if you have nerve
enough. Still, I guess if they let you have the whole valley
afterwards, you'd deserve it." Then he seemed to laugh. "I'll make my
share one thousand five hundre