Our arrangements with the settler’s wife were soon concluded, and it was still early morning when we took our places in the big skin canoe with all our personal belongings under our eyes now; and the Indians having been well fed, pushed off rather sluggishly. But they kept time with their paddles, and soon set up a low, sad, crooning kind of chorus as they carefully avoided the powerful stream by keeping well inshore, where I gazed up in wonder at the magnificent trees which appeared in masses and clumps at every turn.
It was a wonderful experience that first ride on the fierce river, whose snow-charged waters gave quite a sting to the fingers whenever they were immersed. And there was always something fresh to see. Now it was a vast shoal of salmon gliding up over the shallows, or collecting about the edges of one of the many falls we passed, where some stream or another came down from the high grounds to swell the already full bed of the river. Then some bird flew up within tempting distance for one who handled a gun, and then there would be a little bit of excitement as we neared some fierce part of the river where the bed was dotted with rocks, a touch upon any of which must mean a hole through the bottom of our canoe, and her freight sent whirling helplessly down the stream.
It was at one of these rapids that Esau, who had been very quiet and rather ashamed of himself, suddenly half rose in his place, exclaiming—
“Don’t let them go there; it isn’t safe.”
“They know best how to manage the canoe,” said Gunson quietly.
“But you won’t let them go up that bit of water? It’s like a mill-race.”
“Yes; only fiercer,” said Gunson coolly. “Feel startled, Gordon?”
“I do feel a bit nervous,” I said.
“And not ashamed to say so,” he replied, laughing. “Well, you are a strange lad. Of course you are not frightened, Dean?”
“Why it’s enough to scare any one,” cried Esau. “We shall all have to swim for it directly, and nice chance we shall have. Get stunned with stones before we know where we are. Here, look! what are they going to do?”