“I don’t like this water in here at all,” said Jesse, looking troubled. “I could hardly sleep last night on account of the noises it made—it sounded just like glass was being splintered up under the water.”
“That’s gravel, or small rocks, slipping along on the bottom in the current, I suppose,” said Alex, “but after all this is not nearly so bad a river as the Fraser or the Columbia—you ought to see the old Columbia in high water! I’m thinking we’d have our own troubles getting down there in boats as small as these. In a deep river which is very fast, and which has a rough bottom, all sorts of unaccountable waves and swells will come up from below, just when you don’t expect them.”
“These rapeed in here, she’ll been all right,” said Moise. “No trouble to ron heem.”
“Well, we’ll not take any chances,” said Alex, “and we’ll in no case do anything to alarm our young friends.”
He turned now, and, followed by Moise, crossed the neck of the bend and passed on down the river some distance. The boys, following more slowly around the curve of the beach, finally saw both Alex and Moise poised on some high rocks and pointing at the wild water which stretched below them for the distance of two or three hundred yards. Moise, who seemed to be more savage than Alex, made a wild figure as he stood gesticulating, a red handkerchief bound over his long, black hair, and his red sash holding in place the ragged remnants of his trousers. To the boys it seemed sure that the boats could not get through such water at all, but to their surprise the two men seemed not in the least concerned when at length they returned to the camp.
“It’s a little rough,” said Alex, “but there seems to be a good channel out in the middle, plenty of water. We’ll run the boats through all right without any trouble. We’ll go through light, and then portage the camp stuff across the bend after we get the boats below the rapids. Come on then, young gentlemen, and help us get ready. It may be interesting to you to see your first piece of real white water, although it isn’t very bad.
“As I figure it, then, Mr. Rob,” continued Alex, “we ought to have rather better water below here for a little while. What does your map say about that?”
“Well,” answered Rob, “it’s pretty hard to tell exactly, but taking the stories of Fraser and Mackenzie together, we ought to be here about one hundred and fifty miles above the mouth of the Finlay. By to-morrow night, if we hurry, we ought to be at or below the McLeod Lake outlet. Dr. Macoun says in his government report that it is easy running in the late season from McLeod to the Finlay, about eighty miles; and I saw a letter once from Mr. Hussey, a friend of Uncle Dick’s, who made this trip lately, and he said there was not much bad water between the lake and the mouth of the Finlay. Below there—look out, that’s all!
“It took the Mackenzie party six or eight days’ plugging to get from there up to the carrying place,” he added, “but we’re going downhill instead of uphill. I should think we would have alternate stretches of quiet water here and there, but no very rough water from here on down for a while. With our small boats we probably cannot go so fast for a while now as they did with their big canoes. They could run bang through a big rapid where we’d have to portage.”