Little Rifle; or, The Young Fur Hunters

by Edward Sylvester Ellis

That one terrified look showed Little Rifle that it was beyond the power of the poor lad to accomplish the task, and that he was only insuring his destruction by continuing the effort.

“Throw your gun down! jump overboard, and swim for land! It is your only hope!”

These words were shouted by our hero, who swung his hat aloft and screeched like a madman. It may be that his clear, musical voice possessed such a penetrating power, that they reached the ear of his strange friend in his extremity; for he ceased his frantic efforts, and turned his white, imploring face toward him, as if to thank him for the warning even though it could aid him naught.

“Jump! jump! I tell you!” called out Little Rifle, rushing into the water to his knees, in his extreme solicitude, “throw your gun aside, and you can do it. Wait a dozen seconds more and you are lost!”

The boy did wait the dozen seconds. He must have understood the words that were shouted to him, for he sat back in the stern of the canoe, folded his arms, and looking intently at Little Rifle, sadly shook his head, and then raising his hand waved it in greeting toward him.

And as he did so, he could not have spoken more plainly, had he used the word.

“I understand your advice; but it is too late! I must go over the falls to my death, and good-by!”

It was a strange and impressive sight to see this mere boy, after fighting so bravely against fate, meet his doom with the stoicism of an Indian war-chief. There was no wailing or outcry, no frenzied flinging of himself in the boat, as it might be expected that such a one would do, when he saw himself gliding so swiftly and irresistibly toward death; but he sat back in the position we have described, and after his salutation to Little Rifle, turned his face away, and looked at the waterfall before him.

The action of the doomed lad awed and thrilled the heart of Little Rifle, who felt that it was no ordinary character that he saw before him; for not one boy in a thousand could meet death with such heroism. For one instant, the agonized watcher closed his eyes to shut out the dreadful sight, and then yielding to an overmastering attraction, he leaped back out of the water, and dashed at headlong speed, down the bank, over rocks and through undergrowth, until he reached a point directly below the falls, from which he could look up and see the vast sheet of water, as it poured over the ledge into the seething, furious hell of foam and froth below. Here he paused and gazed upward.

The river just before making its final plunge was compressed into a kenyon-like passage not more than one-half its width a hundred yards further up. This deepened and gave it far greater velocity, the current shooting forward like a mill-race, the surface being covered with little eddying waves, as if they were sensible of the awful caldron into which they were so soon to make their boiling plunge. But the entire volume, sweeping forward with an indescribable grandeur and majesty, moved over the ledge in a solid, compact body, fully a dozen feet in depth and without a break. Descending perhaps a rod, in the same solid volume of a deep green color, it could be seen the outer surface of this mass began to assume, here and there, a white, feathery appearance, which rapidly increased, until, something less than a hundred feet below, it resembled an Alpine avalanche—all of a glistening, snowy white. Here where the water was arrested, there was a perfect pandemonium; the billows turning and rolling over each other, throwing the blinding spray far up on both banks, while a thousand currents and counter-currents struggled and fought with each other with such desperate fierceness, that it was not until the stream had reached a point several hundred yards away, and had expanded into its usual breadth, that it assumed any thing like its natural appearance.