"If I have the nerve?" she flung back. "Is that a revival of the sex idea?"
"I beg your pardon," he hastened to say. "It was simply a manner of speaking. Your nerve is like the rest of you—superb. We'll shoot the rapids if it takes a leg. It would ask for more than a leg to make the carry."
A little later they loaded the canoe carefully for the greater hazard, packing the dunnage securely and protecting the meal and the flour as well as they could by wrapping them tightly in the canvas roll. Past this, they cut strips from the remaining scraps of deerskin and tied everything, even to the utensils, the guns, and the axe, to the braces, taking time to make their preparations thorough.
It was well that they took the time while they had it. After the birch-bark had been headed into the first of the rapids there was no time for anything but the strenuous fight for life. Faster and still faster the frail craft leaped on its way, down one rapid and into another before they could congratulate themselves upon the latest hairbreadth dodging of the thickly strewn boulders.
From time to time in the brief respites Prime shouted encouragement to his canoe-mate. "Keep it up—it can't last forever! We're doing nobly. Look out for this big beggar just ahead!"
So it went on, from bad to worse and then to bad again, but never with a chance for a landing or a moment's rest from the engrossing vigilance. Prime gasped and was thankful that there were days of sharp muscle-hardening behind them to fit them for this crowning test. He was sure he could measure Lucetta's fortitude by his own. So long as he could endure the strain he knew he could count upon hearing the steady dip of her paddle keeping time with his own.
But the worst of the worst was yet to come. At the foot of a series of rapids which were like a steeply descending stair, they found themselves in a sluiceway where the enlarged river ran like a torrent in flood. On the still air of the summer day a hoarse clamor was rising to warn them that there was a cataract ahead. Prime's cry of alarm was not needed. With the first backing dip of the paddle he felt the braking impulse at the stern striking in with his own.
"Hold her!" he shouted. "We've got to make the shore, if it smashes us!" But the puny strength of the two pairs of arms was as nothing when pitted against the onsweep of the mighty flood. For a brief instant the downward rush of the canoe was checked; then it was caught in a whirling eddy and spun end for end as if upon a pivot. When it straightened up for the leap over the shallow fall it was headed the wrong way, and a moment later the crash came.
The young woman was the only one of the two who knew definitely what followed. In the tipping glide over the brink they were both thrown out of the canoe and spilled into the whirlpool at the foot of the cataract. Lucetta kept her head sufficiently to remember that Prime could not swim, and when she came up from the plunge she saw him, and saw that he was not struggling.
