Diving forward into the deepening current Art gave himself a quick shove with his long staff and was off after the bobbing cask. Without hesitation Wart followed, their new khaki shirts, neckties and scout hats forgotten. It was a vain race.
When the keg shot into the twisting whirlpool its pursuers suddenly found enough to do in caring for themselves. Connie was on the right-hand bank of the gorge but the current set toward the left. He yelled to the boys to keep to the right but the rush of the water bore them to the opposite side. Connie and others of the boys lay on the edge of the cut, reaching down with their staffs. But the stream-tossed boys were beyond the reach of these and no one had time to cross the gorge to the other side.
Midway, where the defile made an angle, the cork-like cask was hurled against the rocky wall. The swimmers struck the same foam-covered barrier an instant later. The barrel was not out of their minds. Each boy kept his head off and each took the wall on his left shoulder. Several times the swimmers struck and scraped against the rough rock, buried in the spitting spray and the boiling current.
At the lower end of the gorge, where the river turned again into shallower and quieter waters, most of the excited patrol members were on the look-out. As the mysterious keg shot out of the foaming gorge it was seized. In its wake came the exhausted Art and Wart. The boys had suffered no damage, beyond black-and-blue shoulders and half-ruined uniforms. But the dash through the gorge had been one attempted only by the hardiest swimmers.
“Did you make it out?” panted Art as he caught his staff from a rescuer. “Look on the end!”
The keg was rolled out on the sand and upended.
“The other end,” exclaimed Wart—his smart new “Baden-Powell” (as the boys termed their hats) limp and his shirt clinging to him like a second skin.
As the keg was reversed and the patrol crowded about, it could be seen that a crude inscription had been made on its head. As one of the boys dried the top with a handkerchief the marks seemed to have been carved in the wood or possibly burned in with a hot iron. After a close look Connie gasped:
“Wha—wha—how—?”