ot
aboard.

"We've got to do something to head off this runaway!" the bowman shouted
back over his shoulder in one of the quieter raceways. "We're leaving
our commissary behind."

"Anything you say," chimed in the steers-woman from the stern of the
dancing runaway. "My knees are getting awfully tired, but I can stand it
as long as you can."

"That is the trouble," Prime called back.

"We're staying with it too long. The next pool we come to, you paddle
like mad, all on one side, and I'll do the same. We've simply _got_ to
turn around!"

The manoeuvre worked like a charm. A succession of the eddy-pools came
rushing up from down-stream, and in the third of them they contrived to
get the birch-bark reversed and pointed up-stream. Then it suddenly
occurred to the young woman that they had had their trouble for nothing;
that the same end might have been gained if they had merely turned
themselves around and faced the other way. Her shriek of laughter made
Prime stop paddling for the moment.

"I need a guardian--we both need guardians!" he snorted, when she told
him what she was laughing at, and then they dug their paddles in a
frantic effort to stem the swift current.

It was no go--less than no go. In spite of all they could do the
birch-bark refused to be driven up-stream. What was worse, it began to
drift backward, slowly at first, but presently at a pace which made them
quickly turn to face the other way lest they be smashed in a rapid. A
mile or more fled to the rear before they could take breath, and two
more rapids were passed, up which Prime knew they could never force the
canoe with any skill they possessed or were likely to acquire.

Taking advantage of the next lull in the unmanageable flight, he shouted
again.

"We'll have to go ashore! We are getting so far away now that we shall
never get back. You're steering: try it in the next quiet place we come
to, and I'll do all I can to help."

The "next quiet place" proved to be a full half-mile farther along, and
they had a dozen hairbreadth escapes in more of the quick stretches
before they reached it. Prime lived years in moments in the swifter
rushes. Knowing his own helplessness in the water, he was in deadly fear
of a capsize, not from any unmanly dread of death but because he had a
vivid and unnerving picture of Lucetta's predicament if she should
escape and be left alone and helpless in the heart of the forest
wilderness. He drew his first good br