My double gun was stretched along the top of the rock. I dropped the muzzle well below the line of the approaching floating object; then I pulled first one trigger, and then the other. To my right and left shots rang out in quick succession. Again I loaded; and again I fired. We could see nothing now, for the smoke hung in the damp night air. Then Red Cloud called out to stop firing. Eagerly we looked through the murky atmosphere where the raft had been.
It was no longer in the direct line of our landing-place; it had drifted to the left-hand side, and was now in rapid water but still close to the rock, going down stream with momentarily increasing speed. We could see many confused figures, trying with might and main to get the unwieldy craft, to the side of our rock. It was only for a short second, and then the raft was borne along into still rougher and faster waters, to be caught in the remorseless grasp of the furious torrent above the falls, now swollen by the thunder deluge of the night.
We could see no more, the trees hid it from sight; but we had no need for further eye-witness or ear-witness of the fate of raft and crew. Once in the grasp of that torrent, there could be no escape. High above the roar of the cataract one loud cry did indeed reach us a very few seconds later, and then there was silence, only broken by the swirl of eddy, the rush of water against the rock, and the dull thunder of the fall.
As the dawn broadened into day I went down to the lower end of the island. From the grave of the Sioux chief the ground sloped steeply up, until it dropped abruptly to the rapid, forming a bold front of rock immediately over the edge of the fall. The top of this rock stood out bare of trees; beneath it was the rapid, the edge of the fall, and the seething whirlpools below the cataract.
Red Cloud had preceded me to this place; when I reached the grave I saw him on the bare summit beyond, looking fixedly down upon the fall. His arms were folded across his breast. I was beside him a moment later. My eyes, following his fixed glance, rested upon a strange spectacle. Almost in the centre of the fall a rock stood, right on the edge of the descending flood. I had seen it on the previous day, when it had been more exposed to view; now the rising water had covered three parts of its surface, and only the top showed above the flood. On this rock there was a figure.
The light was still too indistinct to allow us to discern features, we could only see that some wretched creature was clinging to the rock, on which he had been cast at the moment the fated raft had taken its plunge into the dark abyss.
But although I was unable at this moment to identify this unfortunate castaway, there flashed across my mind, at the first instant of my seeing him, the thought that it was the trader McDermott who was before me in this terrible position, now hopelessly hanging between life and death.
For a glance at the raging mass of water was sufficient to tell me that escape was impossible, and that no hope of extrication remained to the doomed man.