Then the canoe struck something submerged, and turned over on its side, tipping Dick and Sandy into the boiling whirlpools.
Dick clung to the side of the canoe as the water washed over him. For an instant Sandy disappeared, then Dick saw him come up, also clinging to the canoe, which had not entirely turned over, but had shipped so much water that it was sinking.
Presently, canoe and swimmers were whipped into a deep pool below the falls, and Dick and Sandy began desperately flinging water out of their craft. A little later they crawled back into their canoe, wet as half drowned rats, and Dick pushed off into the center of the stream.
The worst was over. Below the falls the gorge widened out slowly and the current grew more sluggish. For a quarter of an hour they glided on silently without need of their paddles, except to keep the craft in the center of the stream.
“Whew! I hope we don’t run into any more rapids,” Sandy breathed more freely.
Dick emphatically agreed. “Next time,” said he, “I’ll prefer facing the bullets, I think. Gee, if the fellows back in the U. S. A. knew what we’d just gone through they’d have a fit.”
“They’ll never believe it,” Sandy opined.
“We’ll make ’em believe it if we live to tell it,” vowed Dick, pulling extra hard on his paddle and making the canoe leap forward like a live thing. “But, to change the subject, I guess we left the enemy behind this time.”
“I’ll say so,” Sandy came back, “but two duckings in two days isn’t fair. Where can I stop off and get dry?”
“I think we’d better keep moving till noon,” Dick advised. “Then we can kill two birds with one stone—eat and dry off too.”