Leaning hard on my oars, I had good steerage-way on the skiff by the time she dipped over into the fast-running water. Roos was cuffing jauntily at the wave crests, and singing. Because of the sequel, I remember particularly it was “Dardanella” that was claiming his attention. Two or three times he had maintained that he was a “lucky fella” before I saw what seemed to me to be mingled dissent and perturbation gathering in the pump-man’s steel-grey eyes. Then, all of a sudden, he gave vocal expression to his doubts. “You won’t think you’re a ‘lucky fella’ if you put her onta that rock,” he yelled over his shoulder. Turning at the finish of my stroke, I saw that big spray-flipping comber about two lengths away, and dead ahead, looking savager than ever. Trailing my right oar, I pulled every ounce I could bring to bear upon my left, trying to throw her head toward the better water. The next instant I was all but falling over backwards as the oar snapped cleanly off in the oar-lock. I recall perfectly the gleam of the long copper nails which had weakened it, and the fresh fracture of the broken spruce.
The weight I put onto my right oar in saving myself from tumbling backward had the effect of throwing her head in just the opposite direction I had intended. Since she could hardly have avoided hitting the big roller anyhow, once she was so near, it is probably better that she hit it squarely than sidling. The crash was solid, almost shattering in its intensity, and yet I am not sure that she hit the rock at all. If she did, it was a glancing blow, for she could not possibly have survived anything heavier.
The pump-man, true to his sailor instincts, kept his head perfectly in the face of the deluge that had engulfed him. The spare oar was lying ready to hand, and he had it waiting for me in the oar-lock by the time I was on an even keel again. The second wave, which she rode on her own, threw Imshallah’s head off a bit, but by the time she was rising to the third I was helping her again with the oars. Seeing how well she was taking it, I did not try to pull out of the riffle now, but let her run right down through it to the end. Only the first wave put much green water into her, but even that had not filled her anywhere nearly so deep as she had been the evening before. When we beached her below Columbia River station we found her starboard bow heavily dented, but even that did not convince me that we had hit the big rock. I am rather inclined to think that denting was done when I did my lone-hand portage at Rock Island. I was dead sorry I couldn’t persuade that pump-man to throw up his job and come along with us. He had the real stuff in him.
THE PICTURE THAT COST ME A WETTING (above)
THE WRECK OF THE "DOUGLAS" (below)
WE COOKED OUR BREAKFAST IN THE GALLEY OF THE WRECK OF THE “DOUGLAS” (left)
A ROCKY CLIFF ABOVE BEVERLY (right)