ts were through, they renewed their importunities, and he finally
replied:

"Well, young men, I've about concluded to let you go through with the
last boat. Francois says that he has been watching you all, and
believes that you would not get 'some scares.' He says he will take
you through in your own boat, which will be the last one of the
brigade. The river has come up three or four inches since we struck
in, and he says we can run through without unshipping much, if any, of
our cargo, which doesn't amount to very much. Rob has made the trip,
and I figure now that we are all in the same boat together. Sometimes
it is necessary to be either a man or a mouse. I want to see you grow
up men. Well, are you ready now?"

All the boys gladly said that they were, Rob insisting on accompanying
the boat once more, as indeed was necessary, since there would be no
transport after that.

They took ship at the head of the island, and were tooled across the
shallow water to the head of the rapids on the farther shore. Here the
men all disembarked and sat silently along the edge of the bluff,
taking one of the pipe-smokes which make so regular a part of the
_voyageur's_ day's employment. They seemed to get some sort of comfort
out of their pipes, and almost invariably when undertaking any
dangerous enterprise a quiet smoke was a part of the preparation.

Francois talked to them, meantime, seeing that they were eager to
learn about the customs of this strange and wild country into which
they now were going. He told them, motioning to the steep hillside on
the right of the channel, that in the old times he used to pack stuff
across the mile-and-a-half portage there for fifty cents a hundred
pounds. It was hard work, and yet he made it pay. When they began to
portage on the island, and not along the mountain-side, he had made as
much as fifty dollars a day, for he got five dollars for taking a boat
through the rapids, or thirty dollars for running it down to Fort
McPherson; so that a season's work would bring him, in very good
years, over a thousand dollars, if he worked.

"But yong man, she spend the mon'," said he, smiling.

John set down in his book the facts and figures, the date of 1871,
which was the time when old Cap. Shott first ran a boat through the
Grand Rapids. Since that time a few other pilots had come on who
proved able to handle scows in white water. But old Cap. Shott
and his long-time friend, Louis La Vallee, were