isting, the captive foot fell clear. The man came to the surface on
the upper side of the scow, made one despairing but successful clutch,
got hold of the edge, and with his last strength drew himself aboard,
all but suffocated, and with a broken ankle. Tricked by years of
security, he had left his spare pole on the shore. There was absolutely
nothing to do but let the scow drift, and pray that by some succession
of miracles she might survive nine miles of rapids and gain the placid
reaches below.

As the man, white and sullen, crouched on the bottom of the scow and
held his ankle, the colt eyed him wonderingly. Then he eyed the river,
very anxiously, and presently braced his legs wide apart as the scow
gave a strange, disconcerting lurch. The roar was growing swiftly
louder, and those fierce white waves appeared to be rushing right up the
middle of the river to meet the scow. Daunted at the sight, he crowded
as close as he could to the ferryman, and nosed him as if to call his
attention to the peril.

In a very few minutes the scow was in the rapids. But the current had
carried her well inshore, where there chanced to be, for several miles,
a comparatively free channel, few rocks, and no disastrous ledges. She
swung and wallowed sickeningly, bumping so violently that once the
colt's knees gave way beneath him and twice he was all but hurled
overboard. And she took in great, sloshing crests of waves till she was
half-full of water. But she was not built to sink, and her ribs were
sound. For miles she pounded her terrible way in safety through the
bewildering tumult. At last a long jutting promontory of rock started
the current on a new slant, and she was swept staggering across to the
other shore. Here, for nearly two miles, she slipped with astonishing
good luck down a narrow, sluice-like lane of almost smooth water. As if
to compensate for this fortune, however, she was suddenly caught by a
violent cross-current, snatched out of the clearway, and swept heavily
over a ledge. At the foot of this ledge she was fairly smothered for
some seconds. The man clung obstinately to the gunwales; and the colt,
by sheer good luck, fell in the scow instead of over the side. By the
time he had struggled to his feet again the scow had righted herself,
and darted into a wild chaos of rocks and sluices close by the shore.
Here she caught on a boulder, tipped up till she was nearly on her
gunwale, and pitched the little animal clear ove