“No one ever went down Dog Nose Rapids at night,” said the Man from Clancey’s, whose shot had got Dingley’s arm. “There ain’t a chance of them doing it. No one’s ever done it.”
The two were in the roaring rapids now, and the canoe was jumping through the foam like a race-horse. The keen eyes on the bank watched the canoe till it was lost in the half-gloom below the first rapids, and then they went slowly back to Tom Sanger’s house.
“So there’ll be no wedding to-morrow,” said the Man from Clancey’s.
“Funerals, more likely,” drawled another.
“Jinny Long’s in that canoe, an’ she ginerally does what she wants to,” said Tom Sanger, sagely.
“Well, we done our best, and now I hope they’ll get to Bindon,” said another.
Sanger passed the jug to him freely. Then they sat down and talked of the people who had been drowned in Dog Nose Rapids, and of the last wedding in the mountains.
III
It was as the Man from Clancey’s had said, no one had ever gone down Dog Nose Rapids in the night-time, and probably no one but Jenny Long would have ventured it. Dingley had had no idea what a perilous task had been set his rescuer. It was only when the angry roar of the great rapids floated up-stream to them, increasing in volume till they could see the terror of tumbling waters just below, and the canoe shot forward like a snake through the swift, smooth current which would sweep them into the vast caldron, that he realized the terrible hazard of the enterprise.
The moon was directly overhead when they drew upon the race of rocks and fighting water and foam. On either side only the shadowed shore, forsaken by the races which had hunted and roamed and ravaged here—not a light, nor any sign of life, or the friendliness of human presence to make their isolation less complete, their danger, as it were, shared by fellow-mortals. Bright as the moon was, it was not bright enough for perfect pilotage. Never in the history of white men had these rapids been ridden at night-time. As they sped down the flume of the deep, irresistible current, and were launched into the trouble of rocks and water, Jenny realized how great their peril was, and how different the track of the waters looked at night-time from daytime. Outlines seemed merged, rocks did not look the same, whirlpools had a different vortex, islands of stone had a new configuration. As they sped on, lurching, jumping, piercing a broken wall of wave and spray like a torpedo, shooting an almost sheer fall, she came to rely on a sense of intuition rather than memory, for night had transformed the waters.