So far the great volume of water had been accommodated in the channel, and the surface of the river was almost smooth. But with the increasing speed the channel narrowed, and the water became turbulent. Waves rushed on and out from the shores and rolling backs of water chased each other in the center of the stream. Fortunately, though the waves washed the raft from end to end and sometimes drove me to the protection of the upright posts, the river maintained its straight course, and we still rode gallantly onward. There were sudden dips, down which we slid with alarming velocity, that made me shudder, but nowhere a rock, a breaker, no treacherous bend, no falls, not even yet the dashing turmoil of a rapid. What invention of malice was this?
Suddenly my eye noticed a prominent bulge in the river, perhaps three or four miles ahead. It lay about midstream. Here was some formidable interruption? Was there a sluice-way on either side of it? If so I could avoid it; the balloons helped my buoyancy. The raft trembled. Ah, already it felt some premonitions of the tussle. Yes, a decided—no, not a bulge after all; it was a drop, the river fell over a ledge, but apparently a low one, so low that the deep volume filled it up, making the transition from above to below it inconsiderable, and below—I could just see—was retardation, and expansion; the river moved there over a flat! Curious, such relenting!
“Have no fear, Old Boy,” I shouted, stamping the logs beneath me to awaken their attention, “stick together, take a brace and over we go, safe and sound.”
The spot seemed to rush towards us. For an instant I hesitated. Should I scoot to the sides and avoid the plunge? Was it a trap? The tortuous flow sideways might smash us against the rocks, and then—Ah! then, requiescat in pace. Down the center, sink or swim, there was no help for it—once over, thrice saved—a wetting perhaps, perhaps a mouthful of water.
The boiling water lashed us, and something like a moan came to me from the shores, almost as if the baffled river gnashed in its impotent disgust. I steered for the rounded mound in front; a straining creak from the grinding logs, a sharper bolt ahead—I clung to the posts, and the neglected tiller dragged behind—another sprint and I saw the shelving face of the water below the drop tossing furiously. Over, with an upward jolt; that was the greatest danger of all. But the sturdy frame held together, and then in a tussle of bristling waves, noisy, each one striking over its neighbor’s shoulder at us, and I hard at the tiller, we raced down the slope, inundated, wrenched, even pitched a little, but quite safe, quite sound. I could not restrain my impulse to shout, though a moment later, as the mocking echoes smote my ear, fear stilled my voice, and stunned conscience whispered: “Pride goeth before a fall.”
The raft swam later into the center of a lake-like space, in a welter of bubbles and foam from the cascading water. The cliffs here declined, and to the north a pass led upwards at whose termination on the waterside two deer were actually drinking. Had they heard me shout? Their undisturbed assurance denied it. But now they caught sight of me and were retreating with backward glances as they halted on the grass-lined trail. I was in the Deer Fels.
I steered my craft, which had now gained the prestige of an actual companionship, toward the shore, drew out one of the poles, and poled it carefully inshore at a sandy brink not far from the footprints of the deer. I was very quiet now, so as not to frighten away the animals who watched me from a high point. Their presence delighted me, and reinforced my courage. Had they been at my side I could not have raised a hand against them, so fraternal and human did they seem. But oh, for a voice to answer my own! I talked to myself, but not loudly. I dreaded to wake those jeering echoes.
The sunlight streamed through the pass, and I went up a short distance very softly, for the deer were vigilant, but still remained where I could see them. I lay down on a grassy knoll and dried myself. Then I returned to the raft and picked out some food. Much of it was wet and the contents of the hamper needed overhauling and drying. I made a fire, finding some chance sticks and wood, and in the one kettle left to us, and which Hopkins had given me, I actually made a stew which tasted divine.
Then I climbed to the top of the ridge and looked about. I could see the pine trees’ shadow eastward, the rolling hill land of the Fels about me, and beyond, westward, the big plateau of the aquatic trough, and then I thought I caught the pale, fluctuating, gushing pillars of the Nimbus and, as had often happened from other points, glimpses of the pinnacled and snow-capped Rim. I momentarily doubted my own resolve. Should I abandon the raft and travel over the land to the coast? But that awful crevice of the Nimbus rose threateningly to mind. I feared it. Before it the untried terrors of that descent to the coast by the imprisoned plunging stream actually looked inviting. Perhaps too the worst was over. And then the quickness of it. Twenty-four hours more and I would be released. Released? How? Thrown on a pitiless coast, beleaguered by the endless ice! What madness was this. Safety, a kind of animal happiness, at least, had been mine in the sleeping vale of Rasselas. But now—? I shuddered, and the swarming rogues of despair and foreboding rose in clouds like gnats from a shaken bush. It was an instant when a man’s heart seems to weaken into water.
I had slowly retraced my way, and there I stood at the edge of the waterway, one foot lifted to step upon the raft, to all appearances a man calmly bent upon the fulfillment of his purpose. And yet all the while I was beset with conflicting and warring thoughts. It was so as I took the sleeping bag and a rug or so and tied them to the posts, arguing almost unwittingly that, were the hamper swept away, I would thus save them. And then blindly I crammed my pack—ready at any crisis for my back—with food. It was even so as I took my place on the raft, as I pushed it off from the shore, as I maneuvered it into the streamway, even as I took the tiller and guided my boat on to the fastest current. The automatic force of some ulterior prevention just kept me in the chosen line of work, unconsciously and yet irreversibly. Strange!