Swein Poulsson came. With tears in his
little blue eyes he had begged the Colonel to take him, and I remember
him well on that June morning, his red face perspiring under the white
bristles of his hair as he strained at the big oar. For we must needs
pull a mile up the stream ere we could reach the passage in which to
shoot downward to the Falls. Suddenly Poulsson dropped his handle,
causing the boat to swing round in the stream, while the men damned him.
Paying them no attention, he stood pointing into the blinding disk of
the sun. Across the edge of it a piece was bitten out in blackness.

"Mein Gott!" he cried, "the world is being ended just now."

"The holy saints remember us this day!" said McCann, missing a stroke to
cross himself. "Will ye pull, ye damned Dutchman? Or we'll be the first
to slide into hell. This is no kind of a place at all at all."

By this time the men all along the line of boats had seen it, and many
faltered. Clark's voice could be heard across the waters urging them
to pull, while the bows swept across the current. They obeyed him,
but steadily the blackness ate out the light, and a weird gloaming
overspread the scene. River and forest became stern, the men silent. The
more ignorant were in fear of a cataclysm, the others taking it for an
omen.

"Shucks!" said Tom, when appealed to, "I've seed it afore, and it come
all right again."

Clark's boat rounded the shoal: next our turn came, and then the whole
line was gliding down the river, the rising roar of the angry waters
with which we were soon to grapple coming to us with an added grimness.
And now but a faint rim of light saved us from utter darkness. Big Bill
Cowan, undaunted in war, stared at me with fright written on his face.

"And what 'll ye think of it, Davy?" he said.

I glanced at the figure of our commander in the boat ahead, and took
courage.

"It's Hamilton's scalp hanging by a lock," I answered, pointing to what
was left of the sun. "Soon it will be off, and then we'll have light
again."

To my surprise he snatched me from the thwart and held me up with a
shout, and I saw Colonel Clark turn and look back.

"Davy says the Ha'r Buyer's sculp hangs by the lock, boys," he shouted,
pointing at the sun.

The word was cried from boat to boat, and we could see the men pointing
upwards and laughing. And then, as the light began to grow, we were in
the midst of the tumbling waters, the steersmen straining now right, now
lef