“I’ll be on the watch for them,” Jack promised.
They had made only a short distance when, above the noise of the rushing water, they heard the sound of a loud roaring.
“That heap big falls,” Kernertok announced as he turned the canoe toward the shore. “Have to make little carry,” he added as the bow scraped the sand.
“And do you mean to tell me that you’d make a carry for a little thing like that,” Rex asked a little later as he stood on a huge rock and gazed at the rushing water as it leaped high in the air and fell to the whirling pool some twenty feet below. “Just for a little ripple like that?”
“We’ll all wait here while you try it,” Bob laughed.
“Not to-day, thank you. I’ll wait till I get a little more used to some of your dips,” Rex laughed. “But I say, that’s one of the prettiest sights I ever saw. Look at the spray. Niagara Falls is larger of course but when it comes to beauty, believe me, it’s got nothing on this.”
Late that afternoon Kernertok announced that it was only about a mile farther to the head of Chesuncook Lake.
“We stay there to-night,” he said.
He had hardly spoken when the canoe for the first time struck a rock. There was a ripping sound and the next moment the water was pouring in through a rent nearly a foot long.
Almost before he had time to think Rex found himself floundering in the water. Fortunately it was not very deep, not more than four or five feet, but the rapid current made it almost impossible to keep one’s footing. As he shook the water from his eyes, struggling to maintain his balance, he saw Bob and the Indian a few yards below clinging on to either end of the canoe. Jack was nowhere in sight.