at was
close to the surface, a little farther ahead.

"Great!" shouted Henry Burns. "Take it easy now. She'll stay if the pole
don't slip."

Harvey relaxed his exertions, holding the pole at an angle sufficient to
keep the canoe where it was, with only slight pressure. Henry Burns,
dropping his own paddle and likewise taking up his setting-pole, got a
grip in the rocks and aided his companion. They could rest now, with the
swift water rushing past them on either bow, and recover their wind and
strength for the final struggle.

Their plan was, when they should have rested, to let the canoe drop back
about a foot, enough to clear the sunken ledge; then, before the current
should catch them, to shove out into it quickly, turn the bow of the
canoe to meet the rush of the rapids, and push over with the poles, by
main strength. They could do it, if, as Henry Burns expressed it, the
canoe "did not get away from them."

The five minutes they waited seemed like hours. Away up along the carry,
they could see the Ellison brothers, lifting their canoe across the
broken bits of shore; Tom and Bob some way behind these, hurrying as
fast as they dared over the treacherous footing. But now, as they
gathered their strength, and gently shoved their canoe back, a cry from
Tom, who had noted their move, arrested the progress of the Ellison
boys. They paused for a moment and, with Tom and Bob, watched the
outcome, eagerly.

Alas! it was sharp and bitter for Henry Burns. The canoe hung for a
moment, as they arrested its drifting with strong thrusts of the poles.
Then it shot ahead, as they pushed its nose diagonally out into the
sharp slope of the rapids. Henry Burns thrust his pole down hard, as
they cleared the sunken ledge, to swing the bow straight into the
current. But the bottom proved treacherous.

It was all over so quickly that neither he nor Harvey knew hardly how it
had happened. He only knew that the pole did not catch, but instead,
struck the slippery face of a smooth bit of the rocky channel, slipped,
gave way, and that he barely recovered his balance to avoid going
overboard.

The next moment, the canoe had swung around, receiving the full force of
the current broadside. A moment more, they were running with it and
being borne down to where George and Arthur Warren greeted them with
cries--not all sympathetic--of "hard luck."

They had hardly got their canoe under control and turned it into an
eddy, and had realized