Down the Columbia

by Lewis R. Freeman

The sweep, clumsy as it looked, was most ingeniously constructed. Its handle was a four-inch-in-diameter fir trunk, about twenty feet in length. One end of it had been hewn down to give hand-grip on it, and the other split to receive the blade. The latter was a twelve-foot plank, a foot and a half in width and three inches in thickness, roughly rounded and hewn to the shape of the flat of an oar. It was set at a slight upward tilt from the fir-trunk handle. Ike had contrived to centre the weight of the whole sweep so nicely that you could swing it on its adze-handle pivot with one hand. Swing it in the air, I mean; submerged, five or six men would have been none too few to force that colossal blade through the water. Ike admitted that himself, but reckoned that the two of us ought to be ‘better’n nothin’ ’tall.’

As we swung out into the quickening current, I mentioned to Ike that, as I had never even seen a sweep of that kind in operation, much less worked at it myself, it might now be in order for him to give me some idea of what he hoped to do with it, and how. “Ye’re right,” he assented, after ejecting the inevitable squirt of tobacco and parking the residuary quid out of the way of his tongue as a squirrel stows a nut; “ye’re right; five minutes fer eloosidashun an’ r’h’rsal.” As usual, Ike overestimated the time at his disposal; nevertheless, his intensive method of training was so much to the point that I picked up a “right smart bit o’ sweep dope” before we began to cram into the crooked craw of Hell Gate.

This was the biggest raft he had ever tried to take through, Ike explained, but he’d never had so powerful a motor launch; and Earl was the best man in his line on the Columbia. He reckoned that the launch would be able to swing the head of the raft clear of the rock island where the river split “agin” it; but swinging out the head would have the effect of swinging in the stern. We were to man the sweep for the purpose of keeping the raft from striking amidships. We would only have to stroke one way, but we’d sure have to “jump into it billy hell!” “That being so,” I suggested, “perhaps we better try a practice stroke or two to perfect our team-work.” That struck Ike as reasonable, and so we went at it, he on the extreme end of the handle, I one “grip” farther along.

Pressing the handle almost to our feet in order to elevate the blade, we dipped the latter with a swinging upward lift and jumped into the stroke. In order to keep the blade well submerged, it was necessary to exert almost as much force upward as forward. The compression on the spine was rather awful—especially as I was two or three inches taller than Ike, and on top of that, had the “inside” berth, where the handle was somewhat nearer the deck. But the blade moved through the water when we both straightened into it; slowly at first, and more rapidly toward the end of the stroke. Then we lifted the blade out of the water, and Ike swung it back through the air alone. I had only to “crab-step” back along the runway—a couple of planks laid over the cordwood—and be ready for the next stroke. Twice we went through that operation, without—so far as I could see—having any effect whatever upon the raft; but that was only because I was expecting “skiff-action” from a hundred tons of logs. We really must have altered the course considerably, for presently a howl came back from Earl to “do it t’other way,” as we were throwing her out of the channel. By the time we had “corrected” with a couple of strokes in the opposite direction the launch was dipping over the crest of the “intake.” Straightening up but not relinquishing the handle, Ike said to “let ’er ride fer a minnit,” but to stand-by ready.

That swift opening run through the outer portal of Hell Gate offered about the only chance I had for a “look-see.” My recollections of the interval that followed at the sweep are a good deal blurred. I noted that the water of the black-walled chasm down which we were racing was swift and deep, but not—right there at least—too rough for the skiff to ride. I noted how the sharp point of the rock island ahead threw off two unequal back-curving waves, as a battleship will do when turning at full speed. I remember thinking that, if I were in the skiff, I would try to avoid the island by sheering over to the right-hand channel. It looked too hard a pull to make the main one to the left; and the latter would have the worst whirlpools, too. I noted how confoundedly in the way of the river that sharp-nosed island was; and not only of the river, but of anything coming down the river. With that up-stabbing point out of the stream, how easy it would be! But since....

“Stan’-by!” came in a growl from Ike. “’Memba naow—‘billy hell’ when I says ‘jump!’” By the fact that he spat forth the whole of his freshly-bitten quid I had a feeling that the emergency was considerably beyond the ordinary. My last clear recollection was of Earl’s sharply altering his course just before he nosed into the roaring back-curving wave thrown off by the island and beginning to tow to the left with his line at half of a right-angle to the raft. The staccato of his accelerating engine cut like the rattle of a machine-gun through the heavy rumble of the rapid, and I knew that he had thrown it wide open even before the foam-geyser kicked up by the propellers began to tumble over onto the stern of the launch. On a reduced scale, it was the same sort of in-tumbling jet that a destroyer throws up when, at the appearance of an ominous blur in the fog, she goes from quarter-speed-ahead to full-speed-astern. A jet like that means that the spinning screws are meeting almost solid resistance in the water.

Ike’s shoulder cut off my view ahead now, and I knew that the bow was swinging out only from the way the stern was swinging in. At his grunted “Now!” we did our curtsey-and-bow to the sweep-handle, just as we had practised it, then dipped the blade and drove it hard to the right. Four or five times we repeated that stroke, and right smartly, too, it seemed to me. The stern stopped swinging just at the right time, shooting by the foam-whitened fang of the black point by a good ten feet. The back-curving wave crashed down in solid green on the starboard quarter—but harmlessly. There was water enough to have swamped a batteau, but against a raft the comber had knocked its head off for nothing.

Under Ike’s assurance that the battle would all be over but the shouting in half a minute, I had put about everything I had into those half dozen mighty pushes with the sweep. I started to back off leisurely and resume my survey of the scenery as we cleared the point, but Ike’s mumbled “Nother one!” brought me back to the sweep again. Evidently there had been some kind of a slip-up. “Wha’ ’smatter?” I gurgled, as we swayed onto the kicking handle, and “Engin’s on blink,” rumbled the chesty reply. “Gotta keep’er off wi’ sweep.”

It had been the motor-boat’s rôle, after keeping the head of the raft clear of the point of the island by a strong side pull, to tow out straight ahead again as soon as the menace of collision was past. Earl was trying to do this now (I glimpsed as I crab-stepped back), but with two or three cylinders missing was not able to do much more than straighten out the tow-line. As the raft was already angling to the channel, the fact the current was swifter against the side of the island had the tendency to throw her stern in that direction. It was up to the sweep to keep her from striking, just as it had been at the point. What made it worse now was that the possible points of impact were scattered all the way along for two or three hundred yards, while the launch was giving very little help.

A man ought to be able to lean onto a sweep all day long without getting more than a good comfortable weariness, and so I could have done had I been properly broken in. But I was in the wrong place on the sweep, and, on top of that, had allowed my infantile enthusiasm to lead me into trying to scoop half the Columbia out of its channel at every stroke. And so it was that when we came to a real showdown, I found myself pretty hard put to come through with what was needed. Ike’s relentless “’Nother one!” at the end of each soul-and-body wracking stroke was all that was said, but the ’tween-teethed grimness of its utterance was more potent as a verbal scourge than a steady stream of sulphurous curses. Ike was saving his breath, and I didn’t have any left to pour out my feelings with.