ey the rapid.

"It's too much for us, I fear, Mr Charles," said Jacques, shading his
brow with his horny hand. "I've paddled up it many a time alone, but
never saw the water so big as now."

"Humph! we shall have to make a portage, then, I presume. Could we not
give it one trial more? I think we might make a dash for the tail of
that eddy, and then the stream above seems not quite so strong. Do you
think so, Jacques?"

Jacques was not the man to check a daring young spirit. His motto
through life had ever been, "Never venture, never win,"--a sentiment
which his intercourse among fur-traders had taught him to embody in the
pithy expression, "Never say die;" so that, although quite satisfied
that the thing was impossible, he merely replied to his companion's
speech by an assenting "Ho," and pushed out again into the stream. An
energetic effort enabled them to gain the tail of the eddy spoken of,
when Charley's pole snapped across, and falling heavily on the gunwale,
he would have upset the little craft, had not Jacques, whose wits were
habitually on the _qui vive_, thrown his own weight at the same moment
on the opposite side, and counterbalanced Charley's slip. The action
saved them a ducking; but the canoe, being left to its own devices for
an instant, whirled off again into the stream, and before Charley could
seize a paddle to prevent it, they were floating in the still water at
the foot of the rapids.

"Now, isn't that a bore?" said Charley, with a comical look of
disappointment at his companion.

Jacques laughed.

"It was well to _try_, master. I mind a young clerk who came into these
parts the same year as I did, and _he_ seldom _tried_ anything. He
couldn't abide canoes. He didn't want for courage neither; but he had a
nat'ral dislike to them, I suppose, that he couldn't help, and never
entered one except when he was obliged to do so. Well, one day he
wounded a grizzly bear on the banks o' the Saskatchewan (mind the tail
o' that rapid, Mr Charles; we'll land t'other side o' yon rock). Well,
the bear made after him, and he cut stick right away for the river,
where there was a canoe hauled up on the bank. He didn't take time to
put his rifle aboard, but dropped it on the gravel, crammed the canoe
into the water and jumped in, almost driving his feet through its bottom
as he did so, and then plumped down so suddenly, to prevent its
capsizing, that he split it right across. By this time the bear w