It was the most fascinating thing in the world to watch these daring Argonauts rush the rapids, to speculate whether or not they would get through. The stroke of an oar, a few feet to right or left, meant unspeakable calamity. Poor souls! Their faces of utter despair as they landed dripping from the water and saw their precious goods disappearing in the angry foam would have moved a heart of stone. As one man said, in the bitterness of his heart:
"Oh, boys, what a funny God we've got!"
There was a man who came sailing through the passage with a fine boat and a rich outfit. He had lugged it over the trail at the cost of infinite toil and weariness. Now his heart was full of hope. Suddenly he was in the whirl of the current, then all at once loomed up the cruel rock. His face blanched with horror. Frantically he tried to avoid it. No use. Crash! and his frail boat splintered like matchwood.
But this man was a fighter. He set his jaw. Once more he went back over that deadly trail. He bought, at great expense, a new outfit and had packers hustle it over the trail. He procured a new boat. Once more he sailed through the narrow canyon. His face was set and grim.
Suddenly, like some iron Nemesis, once more loomed up the fatal rock. He struggled gallantly, but again the current seemed to grip him and throw him on that deadly fang. With another sickening crash he saw his goods sink in the seething waters.
Did he give up? No! A third time he struggled, weary, heartbroken, over that trail. He had little left now, and with that little he bought his third outfit, a poor, pathetic shadow of the former ones, but enough for a desperate man.
Once more he packed it over the trail, now a perfect Avernus of horror. He reached the river, and in a third poor little boat, again he sailed down the passage. There was the swift-leaping current, the ugly tusk of rock staked with wreckage. A moment, a few feet, a turn of the oar-blade, and he would have been past. But, no! The rock seemed to fascinate him as the eyes of a snake fascinate a bird. He stared at it fearfully, a look of terror and despair. Then for the third time, with a hideous crash, his frail boat was piled up in a pitiful ruin.
He was beaten now.
He climbed on the bank, and there, with a last look at the ugly snarl of waters, and the jagged up-thrust of that evil rock, he put a bullet smashing through his brain.