The cruise of the Canoe Club

by W. L. Alden

Harry instantly called his comrades, and starting up they rushed to the canoes, threw their blankets and stores into them, and prepared to launch them. They had not a moment to spare. The flames were close to them, and were spreading every moment, and as they shoved the canoes toward the water their feet repeatedly sunk down through the ashes below the surface, the flames springing up as they hurriedly drew their feet back. It did not take many minutes to get the canoes into the water and to embark, but as the canoeists pushed out into the river the part of the bank where they had been sleeping burst into flames.

A light breeze had sprung up which was just enough to fan the fire and to carry it into an immense pile of dry drift-wood that lay on the shore below the sawdust bank. The boys waited in the quiet eddy near the bank and watched the progress of the fire. It licked up the drift-wood in a very few moments, and then, roaring with exultation over the work it had done, it swept into the forest. In half an hour’s time a forest fire was burning which threatened to make a terrible destruction of timber, and the heat had grown so intense that the canoeists were compelled to drop down the stream to avoid it.

Canoeing at night is always a ticklish business, but on a swift river, full of rapids, as is the Magog, it is exceedingly dangerous. The fire lighted the way for the fleet for a short distance, but before a landing-place was reached a turn on the river shut out the light, and at the same time the noise of a rapid close at hand was heard.

“HE CAUGHT HOLD OF THE ROOT OF A TREE AND KEPT HIS CANOE STATIONARY.”

The boys had no desire to entangle themselves in unknown rapids in the dark, and paddled at once for the shore opposite to that where the fire was raging. They found when they reached it that it was a perpendicular bank on which it was impossible to land. They floated down a short distance, hoping to find a landing spot, but none could be found. Then they attempted to cross the stream to the other shore, hoping that the fire would not spread in that direction. To their dismay they found that they were already almost within the clutch of the rapid. The current had become strong and swift, and it was evident before they had got half-way across the river that nothing but the hardest paddling could keep them from being drawn into the rapid. It was an occasion when everybody had to look out for himself and depend on his own paddles for safety. The young canoeists struck out manfully. Harry was the first to reach the shore, where he caught hold of the root of a tree and kept his canoe stationary. Tom followed closely behind him, and Harry told him to catch hold of the Sunshine until he could make the Twilight’s painter fast to the root. Joe arrived a little later, for his canoe had run on a rock, and for a few minutes he was in great danger of a capsize.

The three canoeists succeeded in tying up to the bank, where they expected every moment to be joined by Charley. The minutes passed on, but Charley did not appear. His comrades shouted for him, but there was no answer. Indeed, the rapid made such a noise, now that they were close upon it, that they could not have heard Charley’s voice had he been a few yards from them.

The fear that an accident had happened to Charley made the other boys very uneasy. Joe cast his canoe loose and paddled out into the river and nearly across it, looking for some signs of the Midnight and her owner, but he came back unsuccessful, after having narrowly escaped being carried down the rapid. There could no longer be any doubt that the current had swept the Midnight away, and that Charley had been compelled to make the hazardous and almost hopeless attempt of running the rapid in the dark.

As soon as Joe returned Harry said that he would paddle out into the middle of the river where Charley was last seen, and would let his canoe drift down the rapid, but Tom and Joe insisted that he should do no such thing. Said Joe, “Either Charley is drowned or he isn’t. If he isn’t drowned he is somewhere at the foot of the rapid, where we’ll find him as soon as it gets light. If he is drowned it won’t do him any good for another of us to get drowned.”

“Joe is right,” said Tom. “We must stay here till daylight.”