out the little knot of painted savages on the reef to the
left, and caught a blur of scarlet and copper from the shallows beyond
the rapids. The next instant the turbulent waters leaped up and hid the
view, and we struck the verge of the falls.

The Indians to right and left of the channel had evidently been posted
there to prevent us from landing, and they did not fire on us as we shot
by, but they yelled and screeched like fiends, their comrades below
joining in, and above the horrid din of voices I heard the roar of the
great waves that now surrounded us.

For a few seconds--it could have been no more--we hugged the bottom
tightly. Spray and foam dashed over us; the frail craft pitched and
tossed, swung round and round; billows and rocks smote the toughened
birch-bark. Then came a sudden crash, the canoe turned over in the
twinkling of an eye, and out we went into the raging falls, studded
thickly with sunken bowlders and jagged, protruding reefs.

I was whirled about by the angry waters as though I had been a mere
chip, sucked deep down, hurled to the surface, and bruised against
rocks. I fought hard for life and held my breath, and when a spar of
moss-grown bowlder loomed suddenly in front of me, I caught it with both
arms and held it fast.

At the first I was grateful to Heaven for this mercy, and thought of
nothing else. I filled my lungs with air and took a tighter grip of the
rock. Then a burst of shrill yells and a couple of musket shots, ringing
above the clamor of the rapids, roused me from my semi-stupor. I
remembered that the canoe had capsized, flinging us all to the flood or
to the waiting savages. And Flora! What was her fate? The dread that she
had perished sickened my heart.

I shook the water from my dripping hair and eyes, and looked about me.
There was little of cheer or hope in what I saw. I was stuck midway in
the falls, with my face downstream. Many yards below, where the foaming
slide of water broadened into choppy waves and swirling shallows,
Baptiste was splashing hip-deep for shore. Three redskins were dashing
after him with drawn tomahawks, and I gave the poor fellow up for lost.

Moralle had been carried through the cordon of savages, and had reached
the farther bank. There, on the edge of the forest, he was locked limb
to limb with a stalwart warrior. The two were down, rolling amid the
grass and gravel, and three Indians were watching for a chance to shoot
the voyageur without inj