n, filled with huge tramplings
and the shriek of tortured torrents, rose a white curtain of spray,
which every now and then swayed upward and drenched the green birches
which grew about the rim of the pot. For the break in the rim, which
caught at the passing current and sucked it into the slow swirls of
Blackwater Pot, was not a dozen feet from the lip of the falls.

Henderson sat at the foot of a ragged white birch which leaned from
the upper rim of the pot. He held his pipe unlighted, while he watched
the logs with a half-fascinated stare. Outside, in the river, he saw
them in a clumsy panic haste, wallowing down the white rapids to their
awful plunge. When a log came close along shore its fate hung for a
second or two in doubt. It might shoot straight on, over the lip, into
the wavering curtain of spray and vanish into the horror of the
cauldron. Or, at the last moment, the eddy might reach out stealthily
and drag it into the sullen wheeling procession within the pot. All
that it gained here, however, was a terrible kind of respite, a
breathing-space of agonized suspense. As it circled around, and came
again to the opening by which it had entered, it might continue on
another eventless revolution, or it might, according to the whim of
the eddy, be cast forth once more, irretrievably, into the clutch of
the awful sluice. Sometimes two logs, after a pause in what seemed
like a secret death-struggle, would crowd each other out and go over
the falls together. And sometimes, on the other hand, all would make
the circuit safely again and again. But always, at the cleft in the
rim of the pot, there was the moment of suspense, the shuddering,
terrible panic.

It was this recurring moment that seemed to fasten itself balefully
upon Henderson's imagination, so that he forgot to smoke. He had
looked into the Blackwater before, but never when there were any logs
in the pot. Moreover, on this particular morning, he was overwrought
with weariness. For a little short of three days he had been at the
utmost tension of body, brain, and nerve, in hot but wary pursuit of a
desperado whom it was his duty, as deputy-sheriff of his county, to
capture and bring to justice.

This outlaw, a French half-breed, known through the length and breadth
of the wild backwoods county as "Red Pichot," was the last but
one--and accounted the most dangerous--of a band which Henderson had
undertaken to break up. Henderson had been deputy for two years