CHAPTER XI
We needed a good rest, so we took one. I couldn’t get to sleep, but Mark found no trouble about it at all. He can always eat and sleep. We had been up a long time. It seemed days ago we escaped through the tunnel and began the trip down the Père Marquette, but it was that same morning, and now it was just past noon. While Mark slept I sat around until I was tired of doing nothing, and then I got that Kidnapped book out of the canoe and read it. That made the time pass pretty quickly.
Mark didn’t wake up till nearly three o’clock. As soon as he’d stretched and rubbed his little eyes open we launched our canoe and started again.
I’ve told you how the Père Marquette River turned and wriggled and twisted. It wasted an awful lot of time getting to Lake Michigan, and went about five times as far as there was any need of. Some of the water was more enterprising, though. It wasn’t all satisfied to wander around aimless-like. This ambitious part of the water was always taking short cuts. How can a river shortcut? Easy—just as easy as falling off a log. When the main part of the river would go sweeping off in a big loop the part that was in a hurry would find a low spot and cut right across the base of the loop. It would be just as if you were making a letter “U” with your pencil and, when it was done, drew a line across the opening at the top of it, connecting the two ends. The folks in that country call these short cuts cut-offs.
A cut-off usually is narrow, sometimes not more than six feet wide, and hardly ever more than ten. And how the current in one of them does pelt along! It goes about twice as fast as in the river, and it isn’t going slow in the river, you’d better know. We came to one of them about five o’clock that afternoon. Quite a while before we got to it you could hear the water in it rushing and gurgling.
“Somethin’ ahead,” I says. “Wonder if it’s a rapids.”
“S-sounds more like pourin’ water down a spout,” says Mark.
We went slow so as to be on the safe side. We couldn’t see anything that looked dangerous or exciting; in fact, we couldn’t see anything at all to make the sound. But in a couple of minnits we came opposite a cut in the bank and could see an eddy turning toward it. We edged over. The water was sweeping through just like it was being poured out of a pitcher. It wasn’t a fall, but it was a slant. The water was running down-hill, all right.
“Wonder where it goes?” I asked.
“D-dun’no’,” says Mark. “Looks like it might be f-f-fun. Let’s slide down it.”