"I'll start supper," he said. "You fellows might see if you can't land a few trout. There ought to be big fellows between these two cascades."
It did look a good place for trout, and Mac had an appetite for fishing that no fatigue could stifle. He took the steel fly-rod, and walked a little way down the stream past the upper rapid. Fred cut a long, slender pole, tied a line to it and prepared to fish in a less scientific fashion. As his rod and line were considerably shorter than Mac's, he got into the canoe, put a loop of the tracking-rope around a rock, and let himself drift for the length of the rope, nearly to the edge of the rough water. Hung in this rather precarious position, he was able to throw his hook into the foamy water just at the foot of the fall, and had a bite almost instantly, throwing out a good half-pound fish whose orange spots glittered in the sunlight.
Peter meanwhile was fishing from the shore lower down. The thickets were farther back from the water than usual, and he had plenty of room for the back cast. He was kept busy from the first, and when he had time to glance up Fred seemed to be having equally good luck.
But at one of these hurried glances his eye caught something that appalled him. The looped rope that held the straining canoe seemed to be in danger of slipping from its hold on the rock.
He shouted, but the roar of the water drowned his voice. He started up the bank, shouting and gesticulating, but Fred was busy with a fish and did not hear or see. Horace was cutting wood at a distance. And at that moment the rope slipped free. The canoe shot forward, and before Fred could even drop his rod he was whirled broadside on into the rapid.
Instantly the canoe capsized. Fred went out of sight in the foam and water, and then Macgregor saw him floating down on the current below the rapid. He was on his back, with his face just above water, and he did not move a limb.
Mac yelled at him, but got no answer. Fred had not been under long enough to be drowned. He had evidently been stunned by striking his head against a rock.
Then Mac realized the boy's new and greater danger. Fred was drifting rapidly head first toward the second cataract, and no one could dive over that fall and live. The rocks at the bottom would brain the strongest swimmer.
Mac instinctively dropped his rod and rushed into the water. The strength of the swirling current almost swept him off his feet. It was too deep to wade, and he was not a good swimmer. He could never reach Fred in time. They would go over the fall together.
Fred was more than thirty feet from shore. Mac thought of a long pole, and splashed madly ashore again. He caught sight of his fishing-rod, with its hundred yards of strong silk line on the reel.