He shivered. The roar of the rapids was growing, and it was no longer pleasant to hear. The musical cadence which distance had given it was gone, and a sullen, snarling undertone of menace and wrath began to pound at the drums of his ears. In the twilight it looked as though they were racing straight into the mouth of a huge churn out of which milky froth was spouting.
Then two things happened which seemed odd to Peter. The dead porcupine was clinging to the log as if some sort of life held it there, and the fisher-cat's raft of driftwood which they had overtaken and passed was now passing them. To Peter this last was unaccountable, but to Donald McRae, who understood the whims and caprices of flood currents, there was no mystery about it. For a moment the fisher-cat seemed about to make a leap for the log. Then he huddled back and disappeared with his raft in the rougher water that preceded the gray wall of spume.
The man's hand tightened its hold on Peter.
"Hang on and don't get scared," he cried. "We'll go through this like a rubber ball!"
That was the last Peter heard of his voice, and suddenly his father's face was blotted out from his vision. A huge mouth opened and engulfed them. He could feel himself going down it, with roaring gloom and mighty explosions of water bursting itself against great rocks all about him. For a space which seemed an eternity he gave himself up for lost, and he wanted to scream out to his father. But the water smothered him. It thrust him under, buried him, then tossed him up to breathe. He hung on, as his father had told him, and after three or four minutes which were so many hours to him he could breathe easier and the roaring grew less.
They had come through a half-mile of the rapids then. The last of the rocks snapped at them, like growling dogs at their heels, and suddenly the water grew deep and smooth where it swung shoreward in a great eddy. For the first time Peter felt a hurt. It was his father's hand, holding him in a grip that only death could have broken. And then he saw his father's face. Donald McRae was gasping for breath. Even Peter would never know the fight he had made to keep the log running right during those three or four minutes in the rapids.
Slowly the current brought them to the shore. It was the shore they wanted, too, with its deep evergreen forests and its hundreds of miles of untrailed hiding-places. The big pool was dotted with drifting masses of débris. One of these, very near to them, Peter was sure he recognized. But the fisher-cat was no longer on it.
He was terribly cold, and when at last his father brought the end of the log to the shore and helped him out to dry ground the boy fell down in a sodden heap. He was ashamed of himself and tried to get up.
Donald McRae took one of his hands.