The canoes sailed faster than they had sailed the day before, because there was no rough sea to check their headway. They reached Magog at noon, went to the hotel for a good dinner, bought some canvas with which to deck Tom’s canoe, and then looked at the dam which crosses the Magog River a few rods from the lake, and wondered how they were ever to get through the rapids below it.
There was a place where the canoes could be lowered one by one over the breast of the dam and launched in a little eddy immediately below. The rapids, which extended from below the dam for nearly a quarter of a mile, were, however, very uninviting to a timid canoeist. The water did not seem to be more than three or four feet deep, but it was very swift, and full of rocks. “You boys can’t never run them rapids in them boats,” said a man who came to look at the canoes. “You’ll have to get a cart and haul round ’em.”
The boys did not like to be daunted by their first rapid, and, as there did not seem to be much risk of drowning, they decided to take the chances of getting the canoes through it safely. Harry gave the order to lash everything fast in the canoes that could be washed overboard, and he prepared to lead the way in the Sunshine.
It was magnificent sport shooting down the rapid like an arrow. The canoes drove through two or three waves which washed the decks, though the canoe-aprons of the Dawn, Sunshine, and Midnight kept the water from getting into the cockpits. Harry’s and Charley’s canoes each struck once on the same rock while in the rapid, but in each case only the keel struck the rock, and the current dragged the canoes safely over it. When the fleet was reunited in the smooth water below the rapid the boys expressed their enthusiasm by all talking at once at the top of their lungs. Every one was delighted with the way his canoe had acted, and with the skill with which he had avoided this or that rock, or had discovered the best channel just at the right moment. In their excitement they let the canoes float gently down the stream, until they suddenly discovered another rapid at the beginning of a sharp bend in the river just ahead of them.
It was nothing like as fierce in appearance as the first rapid, and as Harry led the way the others followed close after him, one behind the other, fancying that they could run the rapid without the least trouble. Half-way down Harry’s canoe struck on a rock, swung broadside to the current, and hung there. Tom was so close behind him that he could not alter his course, and so ran straight into the Sunshine with a terrible crash. The Dawn and the Twilight instantly followed, and as the four canoes thus piled together keeled over and spilled their occupants into the river, it began to look as if the rapid had determined to make the irreverent young canoeists respect it.
Chapter V.
WHEN the boys were compelled to jump overboard they could see that the water was only about two feet deep; but they did not know whether they could stand up against the fierce current. They found that they could, although they had to move slowly to avoid being swept off their feet. Harry’s canoe was easily pushed off the rock on which it had run, and the moment it was out of the way the other canoes were free. Each canoeist seized the stern of his own canoe, and let it drag him down the rest of the rapid, which fortunately was a short one. While performing this feat the knees of the canoeists were scraped over the rocks, and they received several unpleasant bruises; but they thought it was impossible to get into their canoes in swift water, and so had no choice except to float down hanging on to the sterns of the canoes.
Reaching the smooth water, they swum and pushed the canoes before them toward the shore. Here they found a great bank of sawdust that had floated down the river from the mill at Magog, and it was so soft and elastic that they determined to sleep on it that night, instead of sleeping in their canoes, since the sky was perfectly clear and there was no danger of rain.