“He’s gone!” exclaimed Gordon Duncan. “Lost! Lost forever!”
The next instant their boat, guided by the trusty natives, bumped on a shelving bank and they were quickly drawn up to safety.
In the meantime, as if to veil the catastrophe, a fog drifting down over all, hid all, ice, snow and rushing river, from their view. Ten minutes later a resounding roar told them that something terrific was happening on the river.
“The ice jamb is broken,” Gordon Duncan said quietly. “The current is now free. It came too late. We have lost!”
* * * * * * * *
Urged on by the impatient hunchback, Johnny fought his way forward through tangled willows, over rock piles and down treacherous slopes of melting snow until of a sudden, with an involuntary shout of joy, he came plump against a large dugout turned upside down upon the ground.
To launch this craft, clumsy as it was, required but a moment’s time. Such was the magnificent strength of the hunchback.
And now they had entered the race. With a paddle twice the size and strength of the white man’s canoe paddle, the hunchback drove the dugout forward in the rushing waters at a terrific pace.
It was Johnny who first heard the roar of the bursting ice jamb. They were nearly two miles away, but it filled his breast with a wild terror. That his friends rode the torrent before him he knew. What had happened to them? What was about to befall him?
The current was swift. It bore them on rapidly. When the fog dropped down upon them he realized that safety lay in seeking out shelter in some quiet eddy close to the bank.