“Fish off the back end of the boat,” suggested Clay. “There are fish in the middle of the river as well as in the quiet pools.”
The loss of the primitive canoe was seriously felt, for there were not many places where the Rambler could get close to the shore. Also Alex mourned the loss of his bearskin. Finally Case caught a five-pound fish, and the choice parts of it were soon frying on the stove.
After breakfast Alex proceeded to make his bear stew, and Clay tinkered at the motors to make sure that they were in good order.
“If they had gone back on us when we were in the rapids,” he explained, “we should have been drowned, every one of us. It was the headway of the boat that kept us going right. I’m strong for these motors.”
It was a beautiful morning in one of the most picturesque districts in the world. There were white caps on many of the peaks, and the dark green of the cedar foliage and the brown of the rocks contrasted well with the sun-kissed waters of the river. There were bird-songs in plenty, and here and there a great fish leaped above the surface, as if to inspect this strange thing which rode upon the waves instead of, like a gentleman, diving under them!
After a time the valley of the river broadened out on the west until a great stretch of forest lay between the shoreline and the distant elevations. Perhaps the word valley has been used wrongfully. The country in that part of British Columbia is really an upland plateau, with mountain ridges lifting still higher.
From its source near the Kootenay lakes the Columbia falls hundreds of feet in rapids and foaming cascades before it reaches the Pacific. It is a vagrant stream, winding this way and that, washing mountains and sweeping past high levels of tableland. There are salmon in the river and all kinds of wild game in the canyons and forests it skirts, so it is an ideal water course for such a trip as the boys had started out on.
About noon, when the sun shone hot above the dancing waters, the Rambler came to another drop in the valley. The boys could hear the water tumbling over rocks, and the growing current told them that the falls, or rapids, whichever they were, were not far away.
“I think we’d better get to shore here,” Clay observed, “and take a look ahead. I don’t want another experience like that of last night. It is only by the greatest of good luck that we are alive this morning.”
“That’s the truth,” Case exclaimed. “And somebody is mourning over a plan that didn’t work. I wonder if they think we are dead?”