"We'll try Ha-ha Shallow again. We've got to get across."
A moment, however, Archie paused. A startling possibility possessed his imagination. It was nothing remote, nothing vague; it was real, concrete, imminent. Standing on the brink of the rock at the point where the ice-bridge began, he contemplated the chances of Rattle Water. With a crossing of Ha-ha Shallow immediately in prospect, there was something for affrighted reflection in the current below. And the suggestion was vivid and ugly.
There the water was flowing black, spread with creamy puffs of foam; and it ran swift and deep, in strong, straight lines, as it approached the Black Pool ice and vanished beneath. There was a space between the ice and the fallen current—not much: two feet, perhaps; but it occurred to Archie, with sudden, shocking force, that two feet were too much. And the deep, oily, adherent flow of the current, and the space between the ice and the water, and the cavernous shadow beneath the ice, and the gurgle and lapping of the pool, made the flesh of his back uneasy.
"A nasty fix," he observed.
"What's that, Archie?"
"If a man lost his feet in the current."
"He'd come down like a chip."
"He would. And he'd slip under the ice. Watch these puffs of foam. What would happen to a man under there, Billy?"
"He'd drown in the pool. He couldn't get out."
"Right, Billy," Archie agreed, shortly. "He'd drown in the pool. He couldn't get out. The current would hold him in there. Come along."