increased rapidity through a
narrow gap where the compressed water was smooth and black, but deep and
powerful, rendering great care necessary to prevent the canoe's frail
sides from being dashed on the rocks. Then it met a curling wave, into
which it plunged like an impetuous charger, and was checked for a moment
by its own violence. Presently an eddy threw the canoe a little out of
its course, disconcerting Charley's intention of _shaving_ a rock which
lay in their track, so that he slightly grazed it in passing.

"Ah, Mr Charles," said Jacques, shaking his head, "that was not well
done; an inch more would have sent us down the rapids like drowned
cats."

"True," replied Charley, somewhat crestfallen; "but you see the other
inch was not lost, so we're not much the worse for it."

"Well, after all, it was a ticklish bit, and I should have guessed that
your experience was not up to it quite. I've seen many a man in my day
who wouldn't ha' done it _half_ so slick, an' yet ha' thought no small
beer of himself; so you needn't be ashamed, Mr Charles. But Wabisca
beats you, for all that," continued the hunter, glancing hastily over
his shoulder at Redfeather, who followed closely in their wake, he and
his modest-looking wife guiding their little craft through the dangerous
passage with the utmost _sangfroid_ and precision.

"We've about run them all now," said Jacques, as they paddled over a
sheet of still water which intervened between the rapid they had just
descended and another which thundered about a hundred yards in advance.

"I was so engrossed with the one we have just come down," said Charley,
"that I quite forgot this one."

"Quite right, Mr Charles," said Jacques, in an approving tone, "quite
right. I holds that a man should always attend to what he's at, an' to
nothin' else. I've lived long in the woods now, and that fact becomes
more and more sartin every day. I've know'd chaps, now, as timersome as
settlement girls, that were always in such a mortal funk about what
_was_ to happen, or _might_ happen, that they were never fit for
anything that _did_ happen; always lookin' ahead, and never around them.
Of coorse, I don't mean that a man shouldn't look ahead at all, but
their great mistake was that they looked out too far ahead, and always
kep' their eyes nailed there, just as if they had the fixin' o'
everything, an' Providence had nothin' to do with it at all. I mind a
Canadian o' that sort that t