miles, for, in passing the boats down along shore to avoid a short
piece of fast water, the force of the current broke the line of the
_Mary Ann_, and it was merely by good fortune that they caught up
with her, badly jammed and wedged between two rocks, her gunwale strip
broken across and the cedar shell crushed through, so that she had
sprung a bad leak.

They hauled the crippled _Mary Ann_ ashore and discharged her cargo in
order to examine the injuries received.

"Well, now, we're giving an imitation of the early _voyageurs_," said
John, as he saw the rent in the side of the canoe. "But how are we
going to fix her? She isn't a birch-bark, and if she were, we have no
bark."

"I think we'll manage," Rob replied, "because we have canvas and
cement and all that sort of thing. But her rail is broken quite
across."

"She'll been good boat," said Moise, smiling; "we'll fix heem easy."
So saying, he took his ax and sauntered over to a half-dead
cedar-tree, from which, without much difficulty, he cut some long
splints. This they managed to lash inside the gunwale of the canoe,
stiffening it considerably. The rent in the bottom they patched by
means of their cement, and some waterproof material. They finished the
patch with abundant spruce gum and tar, melted together and spread all
over. When they were done their labors the _Mary Ann_ was again
watertight, but not in the least improved in beauty.

"We'll have to be very careful all the way down from here, I'm
thinking," said Alex. "The river is getting far more powerful almost
every hour as these other streams come in. Below the Finlay, I know
very well, she's a big stream, and the shores are so bad that if we
had an accident it would leave things rather awkward."

None the less, even with one boat crippled in this way, Rob and John
gained confidence in running fast water almost every hour. They
learned how to keep their heads when engaged in the passage of white
water, how to avoid hidden rocks, as well as dangerous swells and
eddies. It seemed to them quite astonishing what rough water could be
taken in these little boats, and continually the temptation was, of
course, to run a rapid rather than laboriously to disembark and line
down alongshore. Thus, to make their story somewhat shorter, they
passed on down slowly for parts of three days, until at last, long
after passing the mouth of the Pack River and the Nation, and yet
another smaller stream, all coming in fro