ing like paddles.
To an extent this helped Neewa in the heroic fight he was making to
keep from shipping too much water himself. Had he been alone his ten or
eleven pounds of fat would have carried him down-stream like a toy
balloon covered with fur, but, with the fourteen-pound drag around his
neck, the problem of not going under completely was a serious one. Half
a dozen times he did disappear for an instant when some undertow caught
Miki and dragged him down--head, tail, legs, and all. But Neewa always
rose again, his four fat legs working for dear life.

Then came the waterfall. By this time Miki had become accustomed to
travelling under water, and the full horror of the new cataclysm into
which they were plunged was mercifully lost to him. His paws had almost
ceased their motion. He was still conscious of the roar in his ears,
but the affair was less unpleasant than it was at the beginning. In
fact, he was drowning. To Neewa the pleasant sensations of a painless
death were denied. No cub in the world was wider awake than he when the
final catastrophe came. His head was well above water and he was
clearly possessed of all his senses. Then the river itself dropped out
from under him and he shot down in an avalanche of water, feeling no
longer the drag of Miki's weight at his neck.

How deep the pool was at the bottom of the waterfall Challoner might
have guessed quite accurately. Could Neewa have expressed an opinion of
his own, he would have sworn that it was a mile. Miki was past the
stage of making estimates, or of caring whether it was two feet or two
leagues. His paws had ceased to operate and he had given himself up
entirely to his fate. But Neewa came up again, and Miki followed, like
a bobber. He was about to gasp his last gasp when the force of the
current, as it swung out of the whirlpool, flung Neewa upon a bit of
partly submerged driftage, and in a wild and strenuous effort to make
himself safe Neewa dragged Miki's head out of water so that the pup
hung at the edge of the driftage like a hangman's victim at the end of
his rope.

CHAPTER SIX

It is doubtful whether in the few moments that followed, any clear-cut
mental argument passed through Neewa's head. It is too much to suppose
that he deliberately set about assisting the half-dead and almost
unconscious Miki from his precarious position. His sole ambition was to
get himself where it was safe and dry, and to do this he of necessity
had to