It was all over so quickly that neither he nor Harvey knew hardly how it had happened. He only knew that the pole did not catch, but instead, struck the slippery face of a smooth bit of the rocky channel, slipped, gave way, and that he barely recovered his balance to avoid going overboard.
The next moment, the canoe had swung around, receiving the full force of the current broadside. A moment more, they were running with it and being borne down to where George and Arthur Warren greeted them with cries—not all sympathetic—of "hard luck."
They had hardly got their canoe under control and turned it into an eddy, and had realized the unhappy turn of affairs, when a shout of derision and triumph came down to them from the Ellisons. They had made the carry successfully and were launching their canoe in the smooth water above.
The Warren boys lost no time in paddling for shore. Tom and Bob, seeing the discomfiture of their rivals, quickly picked up their canoe and proceeded along the carry. Harvey looked inquiringly at Henry Burns, who turned, smiling and unruffled.
"Well?" said Harvey, "got enough?"
"No," replied Henry Burns, and added deliberately, with a twinkle in his eyes, "we might as well do it, now we've started. We've got two days to get up over there in, you know."
"Good for you!" exclaimed Harvey. "Come on, if you're ready. We've got time yet before Tom and Bob make the carry."
They bent to the paddles and got once more to the sunken ledge, panting and perspiring, for they had worked hard and the current seemed, therefore, even swifter now than before. There, holding their canoe in place, they waited a little longer than on the first attempt, to rest and study the current.
"Let's try the right hand from the ledge this time," said Henry Burns. "Those whirls mean shallow places. Perhaps the bottom isn't so slippery."
He pointed at some almost imperceptible breaks in the ebony surface of the slope, and Harvey agreed.