there he found that Rea had taken it down and
awaited him. "Off!" said the free-trader; and with no more noise than a
drifting feather the boat swung into the current and glided down till
the twinkling fires no longer accentuated the darkness.

By night the river, in common with all swift rivers, had a sullen
voice, and murmured its hurry, its restraint, its menace, its meaning.
The two boat-men, one at the steering gear, one at the oars, faced the
pelting rain and watched the dim, dark line of trees. The craft slid
noiselessly onward into the gloom.

And into Jones's ears, above the storm, poured another sound, a steady,
muffled rumble, like the roll of giant chariot wheels. It had come to
be a familiar roar to him, and the only thing which, in his long life
of hazard, had ever sent the cold, prickling, tight shudder over his
warm skin. Many times on the Athabasca that rumble had presaged the
dangerous and dreaded rapids.

"Hell Bend Rapids!" shouted Rea. "Bad water, but no rocks."

The rumble expanded to a roar, the roar to a boom that charged the air
with heaviness, with a dreamy burr. The whole indistinct world appeared
to be moving to the lash of wind, to the sound of rain, to the roar of
the river. The boat shot down and sailed aloft, met shock on shock,
breasted leaping dim white waves, and in a hollow, unearthly blend of
watery sounds, rode on and on, buffeted, tossed, pitched into a black
chaos that yet gleamed with obscure shrouds of light. Then the
convulsive stream shrieked out a last defiance, changed its course
abruptly to slow down and drown the sound of rapids in muffling
distance. Once more the craft swept on smoothly, to the drive of the
wind and the rush of the rain.

By midnight the storm cleared. Murky cloud split to show shining,
blue-white stars and a fitful moon, that silvered the crests of the
spruces and sometimes hid like a gleaming, black-threaded peak behind
the dark branches.

Jones, a plainsman all his days, wonderingly watched the moon-blanched
water. He saw it shade and darken under shadowy walls of granite, where
it swelled with hollow song and gurgle. He heard again the far-off
rumble, faint on the night. High cliff banks appeared, walled out the
mellow, light, and the river suddenly narrowed. Yawning holes,
whirlpools of a second, opened with a gurgling suck and raced with the
boat.

On the craft flew. Far ahead, a long, declining plane of jumping
frosted waves played dark a