Down the Columbia

by Lewis R. Freeman

I never did see just what hit us, nor how we were hit; for it all came with the suddenness of a sand-bagging. Roos was stroking away confidently, and appeared to be singing, from the movement of his lips. The words, if any, were drowned in the roar. All at once his eyes became wild and he lashed out with a frenzied paddle-pull that was evidently intended to throw her head to the left. The next instant the crash came—sudden, shattering, savage. I remember distinctly wondering why Roos’ eyes were shifted apprehensively upward, like those of a man who fancies he is backing away from a bombing airplane. And I think I recall spray dashing two or three lengths astern of us, before the solid battering ram of the water hit me on the back, and Roos in the face. And all Imshallah did was to stand straight up on her hind legs and let little demi-semi-quivers run up and down her back like a real lady exulting in the tickle of a shower-bath. Then she lay down and let the river run over her; then reared up on her hind legs again. Twice or thrice she repeated that routine, when, apparently satisfied that her ablutions were complete, she settled down and ran the rest of the rapid sedately and soberly, and, I am afraid, without much help from either oars or paddle. I have always thought Roos was particularly happy in his description of how it looked for’ard just after that first big wave hit us. “The top of that comber was ten feet above your head,” he said, “and it came curving over you just like the ‘canopy’ of a ‘Jack-in-the-Pulpit.’”

With Imshallah rather more than half full of water, and consequently not a lot more freeboard for the moment than a good thick plank, it was just as well that no more rapids appeared before we found a patch of bank flat enough to allow us to land and dump her. Fresh as a daisy inside and out, she was as sweet and reasonable when we launched her again as any other lady of quality after she has had her own way. Not far below the bridge we tied up near the supply-pipe of a railway pumping station on the left bank. With the black gorge of Rock Island Rapids three-quarters of a mile below sending up an ominous growl, this appeared to be the proper place to stop and ask the way.

The engineer of the pumping-station said that he knew very little about the big rapid, as he had only been on his present job for a week. He had only seen the left-hand channel, and, as an old sailor, he was dead certain no open boat ever launched could live to run the lower end of it. He said he thought the safest way would be to put the skiff on his push-car, run it down the tracks a couple of miles, and launch it below the worst of the rapids. I told him we might be very glad to do this as a last resort, but, as it would involve a lot of time and labour, I would like to look at the rapid first. He told us to make free of his bunk-house in case we spent the night there, and suggested we call in at a farm house a couple of hundred yards down the track and talk with an old man there, who would probably know all about the rapid.

That proved to be a good tip. The farmer turned out to be an old-time stern-wheeler captain, who had navigated the upper Columbia for many years in the early days. He was greatly interested in our trip, and said that we ought to have no great trouble with the rapids ahead, that is, as long as we didn’t try to take undue liberties with them. The safest way to get through would be to land at the head of the big island that divided the channels and line right down the left side of it. It would be pretty hard work, but we ought not to get in wrong if we took our time. He was sorry he couldn’t go down and look the place over with us, but it happened that his youngest daughter was being married that evening, and things were sort of crowding for the rest of the day. That explained why the yard was full of flivvers, and the numerous dressed-up men lounging around the porches. We decided that the groom was the lad, with an aggressively fresh-shaven gill, who was being made the butt of a joke every time he sauntered up to a new group, and that the bride was the buxom miss having her chestnut hair combed at a window, with at least half a dozen other girls looking on.

Roos was very keen to have the wedding postponed to the following morning, and changed to an al fresco affair which he could shoot with good light. With a little study, he said, he was sure he could work it into his “continuity.” Perhaps, for instance, the “Farmer-Who-Would-See-the-Sea” might start them off on their honeymoon by taking them a few miles down river in his boat. That would lend “heart interest and....” I throttled that scheme in the bud before my impetuous companion could broach it to the principals. I wasn’t going to tempt the providence that had saved me whole from the wrath of Jock o’ Windermere by taking a chance with any more “bride stuff.”

The black-walled gorge of Rock Island is one of the grimmest-looking holes on the Columbia, and of all hours of the day sunset, when the deep shadows are banking thick above the roaring waters, is the least cheery time to pay it a visit. Somewhat as at Hell Gate, the river splits upon a long, rocky island, the broader, shallower channel being to the right, and the narrower, deeper one to the left. The upper end of the right-hand channel was quiet and straight; indeed, it was the one I would have been prompted to take had not the old river captain at the farm-house inclined to the opinion that the lining on the other would be easier. The former had been the course Symons had taken, and he mentioned that the lower end was very crooked and rocky. I decided, therefore, to brave the difficulties that I could see something of in advance rather than to blunder into those I knew not of. Although the left channel began to speed up right from the head, I saw enough of it to be sure that we could run at least the upper two-thirds of it without much risk, and that there was then a good eddy from which to land on the side next to the railroad. This was the head of the main fall—an extremely rough cascade having a drop of ten feet in four hundred yards. Down that we would have to line. I was quite in agreement with the pump-station man that no open boat would live in those wildly rolling waters. Fearful of complications, I restrained Roos from accepting an invitation to the wedding, and we turned in early for a good night’s sleep at the pump-station bunk-house.

The game old octogenarian had asked me especially to hail him from the river in the morning, so that he could go down and help us through the rapids. I should have been glad indeed of his advice in what I knew would be a mighty awkward operation, but had not the heart to disturb him when I saw there was no curl of smoke from the kitchen chimney when we drifted by at eight o’clock. The roar of fast and furious revelry had vied with the roar of the rapids pretty well all night, culminating with a crescendo leading up to the old shoe barrage at about daybreak. It didn’t seem quite human to keep the old boy lining down river all morning after lining up against that big barrel of “sweet cider” all night.... (No, I hadn’t missed that little detail; that was one of the reasons I had kept Roos away). So we drifted on down toward the big noise alone. The pump-man promised he would come down to help as soon as his tank was filled, but that wouldn’t be for an hour or more.

Rock Island Rapids are in a gorge within a gorge. The black water-scoured canyon with the foam-white river at the bottom of it is not over fifty feet deep in the sheer. Back of high-water mark there is a narrow strip of bench on either side, above which rises a thousand feet or more of brown bluff. The eastern wall still cast its shadow on the river, but the reflection of the straw-yellow band of broadening light creeping down the western bluff filled the gorge with a diffused golden glow that threw every rock and riffle into sharp relief. It was a dozen times better to see by than the blinding brilliance of direct light, and, knowing just what to expect for the next quarter-mile, I ran confidently into the head of the rapid. Early morning is the hour of confidence and optimism on the flowing road; evening the hour of doubt, indecision and apprehension.

A submerged rock at the entrance to the left channel, which I had marked mentally from the high bank the night before as an obstacle to be avoided, proved rather harder to locate from water level; but Roos spotted it in time to give it a comfortable berth in shooting by. Then the abrupt black walls closed in, and we ran for three hundred yards in fast but not dangerous water. The current took us straight into the eddy I had picked for a landing place, and the skiff slid quietly into a gentle swirling loop of back-water, with nothing but a huge jutting rock intervening between that secure haven and the brink of the fall. So far all had gone exactly as planned. Now we were to see how it looked for lining.

Roos set up on a shelf and cranked while I lined round the projecting rock, an operation which proved unexpectedly simple once it was started right. At my first attempt I failed to swing the boat out of the eddy, and as a consequence she was brought back against the rock and given rather a stiff bump. The next time I launched her higher up, and paying out plenty of scope, let her go right out into the main current and over the “intake” of the fall. It took brisk following up to keep the line from fouling, and after that was cleared I didn’t have quite as much time as I needed to take in slack and brace myself for the coming jerk. The result was Imshallah got such a way on in her hundred feet of run that, like a locoed broncho pulling up and galloping off with its picket-pin, she took me right along over and off the big rock and into the water below. To my great surprise, where I was expecting to go straight into the whirlpool one usually finds behind a projecting rock, I landed in water that was both slack and comparatively shallow. Recovering quickly from my stumble, I braced against the easy current and checked the runaway with little trouble. Roos, who had missed the last part of the action, wanted me to do that jump and stumble over again, but the ten foot flop down onto the not very deeply submerged boulders was a bit too much a shake-up to sustain for art’s sake.