dled, and Red-Eye kept as close as he could to us by following
along the shore. Then he discovered larger rocks. Such ammunition
increased his range. One fragment, fully five pounds in weight, crashed
on the log alongside of me, and such was its impact that it drove a
score of splinters, like fiery needles, into my leg. Had it struck me it
would have killed me.

And then the river current caught us. So wildly were we paddling that
Red-Eye was the first to notice it, and our first warning was his yell
of triumph. Where the edge of the current struck the slough-water was a
series of eddies or small whirlpools. These caught our clumsy logs and
whirled them end for end, back and forth and around. We quit paddling
and devoted our whole energy to holding the logs together alongside
each other. In the meanwhile Red-Eye continued to bombard us, the rock
fragments falling about us, splashing water on us, and menacing our
lives. At the same time he gloated over us, wildly and vociferously.

It happened that there was a sharp turn in the river at the point
where the slough entered, and the whole main current of the river was
deflected to the other bank. And toward that bank, which was the north
bank, we drifted rapidly, at the same time going down-stream. This
quickly took us out of range of Red-Eye, and the last we saw of him
was far out on a point of land, where he was jumping up and down and
chanting a paean of victory.

Beyond holding the two logs together, Lop-Ear and I did nothing. We were
resigned to our fate, and we remained resigned until we aroused to the
fact that we were drifting along the north shore not a hundred feet
away. We began to paddle for it. Here the main force of the current was
flung back toward the south shore, and the result of our paddling was
that we crossed the current where it was swiftest and narrowest. Before
we were aware, we were out of it and in a quiet eddy.

Our logs drifted slowly and at last grounded gently on the bank. Lop-Ear
and I crept ashore. The logs drifted on out of the eddy and swept away
down the stream. We looked at each other, but we did not laugh. We were
in a strange land, and it did not enter our minds that we could return
to our own land in the same manner that we had come.

We had learned how to cross a river, though we did not know it. And this
was something that no one else of the Folk had ever done. We were the
first of the Folk to set foot on the north bank of the ri