sluice, the swaying white spray-curtain, retained its
keenness. As to all else he was growing so confused that he hardly
realized the way those great indrawing gusts, laden with spray, were
helping him. He was paddling and steering and manoeuvring for the
inner circuit almost mechanically now. When suddenly the blackness
about him was lit with a blue glare, and the thunder crashed over the
echoing pot with an explosion that outroared the falls, he hardly
noted it. When the skies seemed to open, letting down the rain in
torrents, with a wind that almost blew it level, it made no difference
to him. He went on paddling dully, indifferent to the bumping of the
logs against his shoulders.

[Illustration: "He was roused by a sudden shot."]

But to this fierce storm, which almost bent double the trees around
the rim of the pot, Red Pichot and Mitchell were by no means so
indifferent. About sixty or seventy yards below the falls they had a
snug retreat which was also an outlook. It was a cabin built in a
recess of the wall of the gorge, and to be reached only by a narrow
pathway easy of defence. When the storm broke in its fury Pichot
sprang to his feet.

"Let's git back to the Hole," he cried to his companion, knocking the
fire out of his pipe. "We kin watch just as well from there, an' see
the beauty slide over when his time comes."

Pichot led the way off through the straining and hissing trees, and
Mitchell followed, growling but obedient. And Henderson, faint upon
his log in the raving tumult, knew nothing of their going.

They had not been gone more than two minutes when a drenched little
dark face, with black hair plastered over it in wisps, peered out from
among the lashing birches and gazed down anxiously into the pot. At
the sight of Henderson on his log, lying quite close to the edge, and
far back from the dreadful cleft, the terror in the wild eyes gave way
to inexpressible relief. The face drew back; and an instant later a
bare-legged child appeared, carrying the pike-pole which Pichot had
tossed into the bushes. Heedless of the sheeting volleys of the rain
and the fierce gusts which whipped her dripping homespun petticoat
about her knees, she clambered skilfully down the rock wall to the
ledge whereon Pichot had stood. Bracing herself carefully, she reached
out with the pike-pole, which, child though she was, she evidently
knew how to use.

Henderson was just beginning to recover from his daze, and to notic