"That is the trouble," Prime called back. "We're staying with it too long. The next pool we come to, you paddle like mad, all on one side, and I'll do the same. We've simply got to turn around!"
The manœuvre worked like a charm. A succession of the eddy-pools came rushing up from down-stream, and in the third of them they contrived to get the birch-bark reversed and pointed up-stream. Then it suddenly occurred to the young woman that they had had their trouble for nothing; that the same end might have been gained if they had merely turned themselves around and faced the other way. Her shriek of laughter made Prime stop paddling for the moment.
"I need a guardian—we both need guardians!" he snorted, when she told him what she was laughing at, and then they dug their paddles in a frantic effort to stem the swift current.
It was no go—less than no go. In spite of all they could do the birch-bark refused to be driven up-stream. What was worse, it began to drift backward, slowly at first, but presently at a pace which made them quickly turn to face the other way lest they be smashed in a rapid. A mile or more fled to the rear before they could take breath, and two more rapids were passed, up which Prime knew they could never force the canoe with any skill they possessed or were likely to acquire.
Taking advantage of the next lull in the unmanageable flight, he shouted again.
"We'll have to go ashore! We are getting so far away now that we shall never get back. You're steering: try it in the next quiet place we come to, and I'll do all I can to help."
The "next quiet place" proved to be a full half-mile farther along, and they had a dozen hairbreadth escapes in more of the quick stretches before they reached it. Prime lived years in moments in the swifter rushes. Knowing his own helplessness in the water, he was in deadly fear of a capsize, not from any unmanly dread of death but because he had a vivid and unnerving picture of Lucetta's predicament if she should escape and be left alone and helpless in the heart of the forest wilderness. He drew his first good breath after the runaway canoe had been safely beached on the shore of an eddy and they had tottered carefully out of it to drag it still higher upon the shelving bank.
"My heavens!" he panted, throwing himself down to gasp at leisure. "I wouldn't go through that again for a farm in Paradise! Weren't you scared stiff?"
"I certainly was," was the frank admission. The young woman had taken her characteristic attitude, sitting down with her chin propped in her hands.
"But, just the same, you didn't forget to paddle!" Prime exulted. "You are a comrade, right, Lucetta! It's a thousand pities you aren't a man!"