get
assistance out of it by rigging a sail from a corner of the tent. This
brought the lead-boat ahead so steadily that Leo and George protested
and made Rob take down his sail. But soon the long reach of slack
water was passed. More and more they could hear, coming up-stream from
perhaps a mile ahead, the low, sullen roar of rapids.

The water began to set faster and faster, and seemed each mile to
assume more and more malicious habits. Great boils, coming up from
some mysterious depth, would strike the boat as though with a mighty
hammer so hard as to make the boys look around in consternation. At
times they could see the river sink before them in a great slide, or
basin, a depression perhaps two hundred feet across, with white water
at its edges. Deep boils and eddies came up every now and then without
warning, and sometimes the boat would feel a wrench, as though with
some mighty hand thrust up from the water. Their course was hardly
steady for more than a moment or so at a time, and the boats required
continual steering. In fact, it seemed to them that never was there a
stream so variable and so unaccountable as this they were now
descending.

"She's worse than the Peace River, a whole lot," said Rob; and all the
boys agreed with him. In fact, by this time all of them were pretty
well sobered down now, for they could see that it was serious work
which lay ahead of them. Now and again Uncle Dick would see the boys
looking at the black forests which covered these slopes on each side
of the river, foaming down between the Selkirks and the Rockies.

Late in the afternoon they passed a little settlement of a few cabins,
where a discolored stream came down into the river through a long
sluice-box whose end was visible.

"This Howard's camp," shouted Leo. "Them mans wash gold here. Some
mans live there now."

Two or three men indeed did come to the bank and wave an excited
greeting as the boats swept by. But there was no going ashore, for
directly at this place a stretch of rapids demanded the attention of
every one in the boats.

And still Uncle Dick urged the Indians of the first boat to go on as
far as they could that night. They ran until almost dark, and made
camp on the top of a high bank on the left side of the river where
once an old lumber camp had been. Here they found the breeze good and
the mosquito nuisance much diminished.

"How far now to Revelstoke, Leo?" inquired Uncle Dick, as they sat at
their