Not a word was spoken until they had passed the last bristling rock, and spun out below where the foamy water took on a less violent aspect.
Then Bedlam broke loose.
“Sit still, all of you!” cried Jack, as he saw a movement on the part of his chums to get up; “you’ll upset the canoe yet, if you try that. Wait till we reach the shore, and you’ll know about it. The man has fainted, that’s all; and I had to take his place.”
“But he was all right when we started, for I looked around and saw him,” declared Herb.
“That’s true,” Jack answered. “He keeled over just before we got to the whirlpool, and as he dropped his paddle right beside me, all I had to do was to dip it in, and exert myself a little.”
“A little!” echoed George, with thrilling emphasis, “look at the beads of sweat on his forehead, fellows! Jack, honest now, you must have saved all our lives. Ugh! just to think, if the boat had swerved then, where would we be right now?”
They looked at each other, and turned paler than when passing through the yeasty waters of the rapids. But Jack tried to make light of it all.
“Oh! shucks!” he laughed, though his voice trembled a bit in spite of his wonderful nerve; “any of you would have done the same thing. Why, there was nothing else to do, to tell the truth.”
“Me?” exclaimed Nick; “I’d sure have been so frozen with horror that all I could do would have been to grab hold of the boat, and shut my eyes. Kept ’em shut part of the time, anyhow. Felt like I had an awful temptation to just jump out of the boat, and into that nice water that was singing and gurgling along beside us.”
“I guess you’d better never try the rapids any more then, Buster,” said George, “if that’s the way it affected you. I remember now hearing you say you never was able to walk on the ties of a railroad bridge, or look over a precipice, because something made you dizzy.”