Then, after a survey of the rubber flotilla, Mr. Brewster decided to take Biff and Kamuka with him in one boat, while Mr. Whitman and Jacome manned the second, each carrying whatever equipment it could bear. The third boat was converted into a raft and loaded with all the remaining packs. Biff’s father took it in tow, letting Hal Whitman pace the trip downstream.
To Biff, this was a fine change after the long, sweaty hours on the trail when he and Kamuka had helped relieve the bearers. They were floating through a maze of jungle green that at times actually arched into a tunnel above them.
Though heavily loaded, the boats moved easily, more swiftly as the jungle banks narrowed and the river itself deepened. Whitman was waving back cheerily as they skimmed off the mileage. Suddenly they saw him rise and wag his paddle frantically as he shouted:
“Stay back—stay back—”
His words were drowned by a mighty roar as they turned the bend and saw what Whitman had already viewed. No wonder the natives called this the Rio Del Muerte, the River of Death! Just ahead, a curved crest of foam showed where the stream took a sudden drop in the form of a mammoth waterfall—a sheer plunge to doom on the rocks a hundred feet below!
CHAPTER XIV
The Devil’s Gateway
“Paddle hard on the right, boys—with all your might!”
Mr. Brewster shouted the order above the river’s tumult, and all three bent to the task. They brought their boat broadside to the approaching brink and drove it toward the left bank of the stream, which here was scarcely a hundred feet wide.
It was a gruelling race against death. There was no escaping the powerful current that seemed to draw them with a suction pull. Yet the jungle bank was coming closer with every stroke.
They were almost there now, but Biff, in the bow, had no chance to catch the first projecting tree, as the boat was swept past it. He worked madly with the paddle instead, for here the bank was eaten away by the current, and there was nothing to grab.