his adventurous lad
appeared to have scant luggage in his well battered bullboat--indeed,
beyond the buskskin jacket, which he had thrown off because of his
exertions, there did not seem to be anything at all aboard the craft,
not even a gun, by means of which he might provide himself with food
while on the journey downstream.

This singular fact would seem to indicate that he might have had trouble
of some sort back yonder.

Indeed, the occasional glances which he cast over his shoulder added
strength to this possibility; though the look upon his strong face was
more in the line of chagrin and anger than fear.

Now and then he shook his curly head, and muttered something; and once a
name passed his lips in anything but a friendly fashion--that of
Alexander Gregory.

Swifter grew the current, giving plain warning to one so well versed as
this lad must be in the vagaries of these mad rivers of the Silent Land
that presently it would be racing furiously down a steep incline, with
razoredge rocks on every side, apparently only too eager to rend asunder
the frail canoe of the adventurous cruiser.

Still Owen Dugdale continued to ply the nimble paddle, weaving it in and
out like a shuttle.

He kept to the middle of the river when it would seem to at least have
been the part of wisdom had he edged his craft closer to either shore,
so that he might, in time, make a safe landing in preference to trusting
himself to the mercy of the wild rapids, in which his frail bullboat
would be but as a chip in the swirl of conflicting waters.

Already had the vanguard of the storm swept down upon him.

An inky pall began to shut out the daylight, and when a sudden flash of
lightning cleft the low-hanging clouds overhead the effect was perfectly
staggering.

The roar of thunder that followed quick upon its heels was like the
explosion of a twelve-inch gun as heard in the steel-jacketed turret of
a modern battleship.

Again and again was the rushing river, with its grim forest-clad shores
lighted up by the rapid-fire electric flashes.

All around crashed the loud-toned thunderclaps, rumbling and roaring
until the whole affair became a perfect pandemonium; and brave indeed
must be the soul that could gaze upon it without dismay and flinching.

It was just then, before the rain had begun to descend, and while the
artillery of heaven flashed and roared with all the fury of a
Gettysburg, that Owen Dugdale found himself plunging int