He swung round a curve. Yes, he was right. Barely half a mile away the whole river plunged into a gorge so narrow it looked like a mere crack in the cliff. The shriek of the tortured waters rang high above the roar of the flood which bore the canoe onward to its doom.
Nick was no fool. He knew that in all human possibility his fate was sealed. No craft that man ever built could hope to pass in safety down the raging flood that boiled through that rift in the mountain.
"Rotten luck!" he muttered. "Well, there's one comfort—there's no one to miss me except old Rube, and I don't remember I ever did any one a dirty trick in my life."
Every instant the scream of the rapids grew louder. Nick could see the mouth of the rift and the yellow waves heaping themselves high against the black precipices on either hand.
On flashed the canoe. Every moment her speed increased. She was a bare one hundred yards from the top of the rapids, when a yell from the right-hand bank rose high above the thunder of the flood, and Nick, turning his head, saw a small, slight figure dashing down through the trees.
Just above the gate of the rapids half a dozen great bowlders showed their black heads above the yellow foam. Without a moment's hesitation the stranger leaped from the bank to the nearest, and so from rock to rock, till he stood far out near the centre of the raging river.
Nick watched him with straining eyes. Was there still a bare chance? No! At that moment an eddy swept the canoe away to the left. With a groan Nick realized that she would pass far out of reach of his would-be rescuer.
The canoe shot like an arrow toward the lip of the fall. Nick waved the broken stump of his paddle in farewell to the figure on the rocks.
The latter's right arm whirled up, and, with a sharp hiss, a coil of rope flashed out and dropped clean and true across the canoe.
Nick snatched at it with the energy of despair. As it tightened, the canoe was drawn away from under him, and he, dragged over the stern, was struggling in the rushing water.