Beyond the sunset

by Arthur D. Howden Smith

"It will take many hours," answered Tawannears. "Our work has just begun."

We got out the rough paddles we had carved and undertook to steer diagonally with the current, but experience proved that a consistent course was impossible of attainment. We made distance in the desired direction—and were promptly picked up by an eddy and tossed back again, or else the vagrant wind set in to toy with us. The waves rolled higher constantly, and we were wet to the waist. But we fought on, and the longer we fought the more intelligent our efforts became.

There was a trick to this work, a trick entirely different from navigating a light, amenable, birchen canoe. Our raft had a will of its own, and a certain sense of decency. Handled as it desired to be, it would even accomplish a measure of our desires, and gradually we came to learn its ways. This aided us in winning ground—or, I should say, water; but nothing could aid us in conflicting the capricious moods of wind and current. Sometimes we had both behind us, and then we were driven rapidly downstream. Again, the wind would come from the quarter and mitigate somewhat the effect of the current. Mid-afternoon found us with nothing gained beyond a hazardous mid-stream course that was varied by occasional wild lurches in the direction of one shore or the other.

When the current discharged us towards the eastern bank we battled desperately against it. When, in one of its incomprehensible moments of beneficence, it started us in the desired direction we labored with gritting teeth to assist it. And every time this happened it ended by spinning us around and starting us back the way we had come. Night shut down upon us miles from our starting place, but less than half-way across.

Sleep, of course, was unthinkable. We were wet. We had little edible food. But tired as we were, we were still unwilling to suspend for a minute our struggle against the river. Moreover, we now required all our vigilance, for the waters were laden with other floating objects, sinister, half-sunken projectiles that had been trees and were now the instruments of the river's wrath. One of these, a giant hulk of wood, careened against us in the faint star-light and partially demolished the structure upon which we had placed our arms and superfluous clothing. We narrowly escaped losing all our store of powder in this misadventure, and the shock had noticeable effect in loosening the fabric of the raft. It developed an increasing sluggishness, a more frequent tendency to lurch uncertainly, and our attempts to direct its progress became ridiculously inept.

But we did not desist. The night was cool, but we sweated as we had on the broiling savannahs, and tapped unknown reservoirs of strength to maintain our fight. We seldom spoke to one another. There was little occasion for words, except once in a while to shout a warning. And Black Robe paddled and poled beside us, hour by hour. I do not remember that he ever spoke that night. We were afraid, frankly, openly afraid, admitting it tacitly one to another. But I am sure that he was as serenely indifferent to fate as he had been in prodding us to start. He was the only one who did not croak hoarse exultation when the river played its last trick upon us.

This came just after sunrise. We had felt for the past hour an erratic swirl in the eddying current. Now we sighted a mile or so ahead of us to the right the mouth of another river, little narrower than the Mississippi.

"That is the Missouri, brothers!" exclaimed Tawannears. "We are far downstream. If we are carried beyond this we shall land in the country of the Mandans, who are enemies of the Dakota and eaters of human flesh. Hawenneyu has veiled his face from us!"

But at that instant Hawenneyu withdrew the veil and smiled upon us. What happened, I think, was that the incoming stream of the Missouri, meeting the torrent of the Mississippi, combined with the Great River to form a whirlpool of eddies, with a backshoot toward the western bank. At any rate, we were suddenly spun about like a chip in a kennel, so rapidly that it was dizzying. Nothing that we could do had any influence upon the course of the raft. We tried to work against the eddies for several moments, and finally gave it up in disgust, determined to meet whatever doom was in store for us without flinching.

Our reward was to be impelled at most amazing speed toward the west bank. Twice on our way we were caught and torn at by opposing eddies, but each time the raft worked free of its own volition, and the rising sun saw us floating, water-logged and bedraggled, in a backwater under the western bank, perhaps half a mile above the mouth of the Missouri.