[CHAPTER XV]
IN WHICH THE MYSTERY IS VERY NEARLY EXPLAINED
Just at this critical instant, when almost certain death threatened Barnabas, a fortunate thing happened. The bow of the Tory's canoe struck a half-submerged rock, and the sudden jar spoiled his aim, so that the bullet passed a foot above his intended victim.
In the twinkling of an eye the long craft swung around, lodged fore and aft across a narrow passage of the falls, and turned bottom up. Out went Glass, head-first into the foaming waves on the lower side.
There was no time for his pursuers to sheer off, and scarcely an instant later the second canoe crashed into the obstruction and swung broadside against it, though luckily without capsizing. But the shock pitched Barnabas out of the bow, and with a vain attempt to grab the canoe in front he glided off the slippery bottom, and was borne down the stretch of boiling rapids. The lads caught a brief glimpse of him as he bumped into Glass, who had lodged on a spur of rock twenty feet away. Then both were washed off by the furious current, locked together in a desperate struggle, and the gloom hid them from view.
"Barnabas will be drowned!" cried Nathan. "And we can't do anything to save him! We're stuck tight!"
"We've got to get loose!" exclaimed Godfrey, and with his paddle he struck the forward boat a terrific blow. To his delight it grated free at the stern end and whirled around, and that quickly the two canoes were bounding side by side amid the perilous falls, swinging this way and that, leaping high over crested waves, and rebounding from the cruel rap of hidden ledges.
Any attempt at steering was out of the question in so mad a current, but the lads hardly thought of the danger. Before they could realize it, their canoe had dashed safely down the roaring, raging slope, and was cleaving the choppy little waves that marked the even flow of the river beyond the rapids.
With anxious hearts, and with a fear that they dared not put into words, Nathan and Godfrey paddled swiftly along on the current, eagerly watching ahead and out toward mid-channel, and over to the near-by wooded shore. The moon was under clouds again, and the surface of the river was misty. Frequently they shouted the name of the missing man, but only the sullen voice of the rapids answered.