Then they sat down and talked of the
people who had been drowned in Dog Nose Rapids and of the last wedding in
the mountains.
III
It was as the Man from Clancey's had said, no one had ever gone down Dog
Nose Rapids in the nighttime, and probably no one but Jenny Long would
have ventured it. Dingley had had no idea what a perilous task had been
set his rescuer. It was only when the angry roar of the great rapids
floated up-stream to them, increasing in volume till they could see the
terror of tumbling waters just below, and the canoe shot forward like a
snake through the swift, smooth current which would sweep them into the
vast caldron, that he realised the terrible hazard of the enterprise.
The moon was directly overhead when they drew upon the race of rocks and
fighting water and foam. On either side only the shadowed shore, forsaken
by the races which had hunted and roamed and ravaged here--not a light,
nor any sign of life, or the friendliness of human presence to make their
isolation less complete, their danger, as it were, shared by
fellow-mortals. Bright as the moon was, it was not bright enough for
perfect pilotage. Never in the history of white men had these rapids been
ridden at nighttime.
Pages:
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134