rapids.

But the glory of it all was the sunlight. It fell right on the mass of
descending water; and in the rays the fall glittered and flashed with
all the colours of the rainbow, and the flying spray was like powdered
jewels. It caught the drops hanging on the ferns that fringed the water,
and turned them into twinkling diamonds. The whole fall seemed to be
alive in the sunbeams' dancing light.

"Oh-h, I say," whispered Harry. "Fancy never showing us this before!" He
cast himself on the ground and lay, chin in hands, gazing at the wonder
before him.

"We kept it to the last," said Norah softly. She sat down by him and the
others followed their example.

"Just think," said Harry, "that old creek's been doing that ever since
time began--every day the sun comes to take his share at lighting it up,
long before we were born, and ages after we shall die! Doesn't it make
you feel small!"

Norah nodded understandingly. "I saw it once by moonlight," she said.
"Dad and I rode here one night--full moon. Oh, it was lovely! Not like
this, of course, because there wasn't any colour--but a beautiful white,
clean light, and the fall was like a sheet of silver."

"Did you ever throw anything over?" asked Wally. His wonderment was
subsiding and the boy in him woke up again.

"No good," said Jim. "You never see it again. I've thrown a stick in up
above, and it simply whisks over and gets sucked underneath the curtain
of water at once, and disappears altogether until it reaches the smooth
water, ever so far down."

"Say you went over yourself?"

"Wouldn't be much left of you," Jim answered, with a laugh. "The bed of
the creek's simply full of rocks--you can see a spike sticking up here
and there in the rapids. We've seen sheep come down in flood-time--they
get battered to bits. I don't think I'll try any experiments, thank you,
young Wally."

"You always were a disobliging critter," Wally grinned.

"Another time a canoe came over," Jim said. "It belonged to two chaps
farther up--they'd just built it, and were out for the first time, and
got down too near the falls. They didn't know much about managing their
craft, and when the suck of the water began to take them along they
couldn't get out of the current. They went faster and faster, struggling
to paddle against the stream, instead of getting out at an angle and
making for the bank--which they might have done. At last they could hear
the roar of the falls quite plainly."