Down the Columbia Part 15

A prosperous apple farmer sitting next me (he had been telling me what his crop would bring the while the naturally vamp-faced heroine was trying to register pup-innocence and "gold-cannot-buy-me" as the villain was choking her) sniffed contemptuously as the discomfited Democrat disappeared through the swinging doors. "Seems to feel worse about being caught with an imitation coat than about being an imitation politician.

Better send him to Congress!" Now _wasn't_ that good for a small town that didn't even have a railroad? I've known men of cities of all of a hundred thousand, with street cars, munic.i.p.al baths, Carnegie libraries and women's clubs, who hadn't the measure of Congress as accurately as that. I wish there had been time to see more of Bridgeport.

It was down to twelve above when we turned out in the morning, with the clear air tingling with frost particles and incipient ice-fringes around the eddies. Fortunately, Earl had bailed both boats the night before and drained his engine. Just below Bridgeport the river, which had been running almost due west from the mouth of the Spokane River, turned off to the north. In a slackening current we approached the small patch of open country at the mouth of the Okinagan. The latter, which heads above the lake of the same name in British Columbia, appears an insignificant stream as viewed from the Columbia, and one would never suspect that it is navigable for good-sized stern-wheelers for a considerable distance above its mouth. On the right bank of the Columbia, just above the mouth of the Okinagan, is the site of what was perhaps the most important of the original Astor posts of the interior. As a sequel to the war of 1812 it was turned over to the Northwest Company, and ultimately pa.s.sed under the control of Hudson Bay. I could see nothing but a barren flat at this point where so much history was made, but a splendid apple orchard occupies most of the fertile bench in the loop of the bend on the opposite bank.

The mouth of the Okinagan marks the most northerly point of the Was.h.i.+ngton Big Bend of the Columbia. From there it flows southwesterly for a few miles to the mouth of the Methow, before turning almost directly south. We pa.s.sed Brewster without landing, but pulled up alongside a big stern-wheeler moored against the bank at Potaris, just above the swift-running Methow Rapids. It was the _Bridgeport_, and Ike had spoken of her skipper, whom he called "Old Cap," many times and with the greatest affection. "Old Cap" proved to be the Captain McDermid, who had run the _Shoshone_ down through Grand Rapids, and who was rated as the nerviest steamer skipper left on the Columbia.

Captain McDermid was waiting on the bow of his steamer to give us a hand aboard. He had read of our voyage in the Spokane papers, he said, and had been on the lookout for several days. At first he had watched for a skiff, but later, when he had heard that we had pushed off with Ike on a raft, it was logs he had been keeping a weather eye lifting for. When Ike described the raft to him, he wagged his head significantly, and said he reckoned it was just as well we had changed to the launch for Box Canyon. "It isn't everybody that can navigate under water like this old rat here," he added, giving Ike a playful prod in the ribs.

As we were planning to go on through to the mouth of the Chelan River, in the hope of getting up to the lake that afternoon, an hour was the most I could stop over on the _Bridgeport_ for a yarn with Captain McDermid, where I would have been glad of a week. He told me, very simply but graphically, of the run down Grand Rapids, and a little of his work with stern or side-wheelers in other parts of the world, which included a year on the upper Amazon and about the same time as skipper of a ferry running from the Battery to Staten Island. Then he spoke, with a shade of sadness, of the _Bridgeport_ and his plans for the future. In all the thousand miles of the Columbia between the Dalles and its source, she had been the last steamer to maintain a regular service.

(This was not reckoning the Arrow Lakes, of course). But the close of the present apple season had marked the end. Between the increasing compet.i.tion of railways and trucks, the game was no longer worth the candle. He, and his partners in the _Bridgeport_, had decided to try to take her to Portland and offer her for sale. She was very powerfully engined and would undoubtedly bring a good price--once they got her there. But getting her to Portland was the rub. There were locks at the Cascades and the Dalles, but Rock Island, Cabinet, Priest and Umatilla, to say nothing of a number of lesser rapids would have to be run. It was a big gamble, insurance, of course, being out of the question on any terms. The _Douglas_, half the size of the _Bridgeport_, had tried it a couple of months ago, and--well, we would see the consequences on the rocks below Cabinet Rapids. Got through Rock Island all right, and then went wrong in Cabinet, which wasn't half as bad. Overconfidence, probably, "Old Cap" thought. But he felt sure that _he_ would have better luck, especially if he went down first and made a good study of Rock Island and Priest; and that was one of the things that he had wanted to see me about. If there was room for him in the skiff, he would like to run through with us as far as Pasco, and brush up on the channel as we went along. If things were so he could get away, he would join us at Wenatchee on our return from Chelan. I jumped at the chance without hesitation, for it would give us the benefit of the experience and help of the very best man on that part of the Columbia in getting through the worst of the rapids that remained to be run. I had been a good deal concerned about how the sinister cascade of Rock Island was to be negotiated, to say nothing of the long series of riffles called Priest Rapids, which had even a worse record. I parted with Captain McDermid with the understanding that we would get in touch by phone a day or two later, when I knew definitely when we would return to the river from Chelan, and make the final arrangements.

Leaving Ike on the _Bridgeport_ for a yarn with his old friend, we pushed off in the launch for Chelan. Methow Rapids, just below the river of that name, was the only fast water encountered, and that was a good, straight run in a fairly clear channel. We landed half a mile below the mouth of the Chelan River, where the remains of a road led down through the boulders to the tower of an abandoned ferry. Earl put about at once and headed back up-stream, expecting to pick up Ike at Potaris and push on through to Bridgeport that evening.

We parted from both Earl and Ike in all good feeling and with much regret. Each in his line was one of the best men I have ever had to do with. Ike--in spite of the extent to which his movements were dominated by the maxim that "time is made for slaves," or, more likely, for that very reason--was a most priceless character. I only hope I shall be able to recruit him for another river voyage in the not-too-distant future.

CHAPTER XII

CHELAN TO PASCO

For two reasons I am writing but briefly of our visit to Lake Chelan: first, because it was entirely incidental to the Columbia voyage, and, second, because one who has only made the run up and down this loveliest of mountain lakes has no call to write of it. Chelan is well named "Beautiful Water." Sixty miles long and from one to four miles wide, cliff-walled and backed by snowy mountains and glaciers, it has much in common with the Arrow Lakes of the upper Columbia, and, by the same tokens, Kootenay Lake. Among the large mountain lakes of the world it has few peers.

The Chelan River falls three hundred and eighty-five feet in the four miles from the outlet of the lake to where it tumbles into the Columbia.

It is a foam-white torrent all the way, with a wonderful "Horse-shoe"

gorge near the lower end which has few rivals for savage grandeur. One may reach the lake from the Columbia by roads starting either north or south of the draining river. We went by the latter, as it was the more conveniently reached from the ferry-man's house where we had left our outfit after landing. The town of Chelan, at the lower end of the lake, is a lovely little village, with clean streets, bright shops, and a very comfortable hotel. I have forgotten the name of the hotel, but not the fact that it serves a big pitcher of thick, yellow cream with every breakfast. So far as my own experience goes, it is the only hotel in America or Europe which has perpetuated that now all but extinct ante-bellum custom. In case there may be any interested to know--even actually to enjoy--what our forefathers had with their coffee and mush, I will state that three transcontinental railways pa.s.s within a hundred miles to the southward of Chelan. It will prove well worth the stop-over; and there is the lake besides.

The lower end of Lake Chelan is surrounded by rolling hills, whose fertile soil is admirably adapted to apples, now an important industry in that region; the upper end is closely walled with mountains and high cliffs--really an extremely deep gorge half filled with water. Indeed, the distinction of being the "deepest furrow Time has wrought on the face of the Western Hemisphere" is claimed for upper Chelan Lake--this because there are cliffs which rise almost vertically for six thousand feet from the water's edge, and at a point where the sounding lead has needed nearly a third of that length of line to bring it back from a rocky bottom which is indented far below the level of the sea.

The head of Chelan is far back in the heart of the Cascades, in the glaciers of which its feeding streams take their rise. The main tributaries are Railroad Creek, which flows in from the south about two-thirds of the way up, and Stehekin River, which comes in at the head. These two streams are credited with some of the finest waterfalls, gorges and cliff and glacier-begirt mountain valleys to be found in North America, and it is possible to see the best of both in the course of a single "circular" trip by packtrain. To my great regret, it was not practicable to get an outfit together in the limited time at our disposal. The best we could do so late in the season was a hurried run up to Rainbow Falls, a most striking cataract, three hundred and fifty feet in height, descending over the cliffs of the Stehekin River four miles above the head of the lake. Roos made a number of scenic shots here, but on a roll which--whether in the camera or the laboratory it was impossible to determine--was badly light-struck. Similar misfortune attended a number of other shots he made (through the courtesy of the Captain of the mail launch in running near the cliffs) of waterfalls tumbling directly into the lake. There are many slips between the cup and the lip--the camera and the screen, I should say--in scenic movie work.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A ROCKY CLIFF NEAR HEAD OF LAKE CHELAN]

[Ill.u.s.tration: RAINBOW FALLS, 350 FEET HIGH, ABOVE HEAD OF LAKE CHELAN]

[Ill.u.s.tration: WENATCHEE UNDER THE DUST CLOUD OF ITS SPEEDING AUTOS (_above_)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: HEAD OF ROCK ISLAND RAPIDS (_below_)]

We arrived back at the town of Chelan in time for lunch on the sixth of November, and a couple of hours later were down at the Columbia ready to push off again. I had been unable to get in touch with Captain McDermid by phone, but was confident that he would turn up in good time at Wenatchee. As there was nothing between that point and the mouth of the Chelan in the way of really bad water, I had no hesitation in making the run without a "pilot." Launching _Imshallah_ below the old ferry-tower at two o'clock, we reached the little town of Entiat, just above the river and rapids of that name, at five. The skiff rode higher with Captain Armstrong and his luggage out, her increased buoyancy compensating in a measure for the less intelligent handling she had.

Roos took the steering paddle in the stern, and I continued rowing from the forward thwart. All of the luggage was s.h.i.+fted well aft. The current was fairly swift all the way, but the two or three rapids encountered were not difficult to pa.s.s. Ribbon Cliff, two thousand feet high and streaked with strata of yellow, grey and black clays, was the most striking physical feature seen in the course of this easy afternoon's run.

Entiat is a prosperous little apple-growing centre, and, with the packing season at its height, was jammed to the roof with workers. Rooms at the hotel were out of the question. Roos slept on a couch in the parlour, which room was also occupied by three drummers and two truck drivers. I had a shakedown on a canvased-in porch, on which were six beds and four cots. My room-mates kept me awake a good part of the night growling because their wages had just been cut to seven dollars a day, now that the rush was over. I would have been the more surprised that any one should complain about a wage like that had not a trio of farmettes--or rather packettes--at the big family dinner table been comparing notes of their takings. One twinkling-fingered blonde confessed to having averaged thirteen dollars a day for the last week packing apples, while a brown-bloomered brunette had done a bit better than twelve. The third one--attenuated, stoop-shouldered and spectacled--was in the dumps because sore fingers had scaled her average down to ten-fifty--"hardly worth coming out from Spokane for," she sniffed. Roos tried to engage them in conversation, and started out auspiciously with a description of running Box Canyon. But the gimlet-eyed thin one asked him what he got for doing a thing like that, and promptly their interest faded. And why _should_ they have cared to waste time over a mere seventy-five-dollar-a-week cameraman? But it was something even to have eaten pumpkin pie with the plutocracy.

The swift-flowing Entiat River has dumped a good many thousand tons of boulders into the Columbia, and most of these have lodged to form a broad, shallow bar a short distance below the mouth of the former. The Columbia hasn't been able quite to make up its mind the best way to go here, and so has. .h.i.t on a sort of a compromise by using three or four channels. Roos found himself in a good deal the same sort of dilemma when we came rolling along there on the morning of the seventh, but as a boat--if it is going to preserve its ent.i.ty as such--cannot run down more than one channel at a time, _Imshallah_ found the attempt at a compromise to which she was committed only ended in b.u.t.ting her head against a low gravel island. It was impossible to make the main middle channel from there, but we poled off without much difficulty and went b.u.mping off down a shallow channel to the extreme right. She kissed off a boulder once or twice before winning through to deeper water, but not hard enough to do her much harm. It was a distinctly messy piece of work, though, and I was glad that Ike or Captain Armstrong was not there to see their teachings put into practice.

The river cliffs became lower as we ran south, and after pa.s.sing a commanding point on the right bank we came suddenly upon the open valley of the Wenatchee, the nearest thing to a plain we had seen in all the hundreds of miles from the source of the Columbia. There are not over twenty to thirty square miles of land that is even comparatively level here, but to eyes which had been wont for two months to seek sky-line with a forty-five degree upward slant of gaze it was like coming out of an Andean pa.s.s upon the boundless Pampas of Argentina.

Wenatchee was in sight for several miles before we reached it, an impressive water-front of mills, warehouses and tall buildings. Over all floated a dark pall, such as one sees above Pittsburgh, Birmingham, Essen or any other great factory city, but we looked in vain for the forest of chimneys it would have taken to produce that bituminous blanket. As we drew nearer we discovered that what we had taken to be smoke was a mighty dust-cloud. It was a Sunday at the height of the apple-packing season, and all the plutocratic packettes were joy-riding.

There were, it is true, more Fords than Rolls-Royces in the solid double procession of cars that jammed the main street for a mile, but that was doubtless because the supply of the former had held out better. I can't believe that the consideration of price had anything to do with it.

The hotel, of course, was full, even with the dining-room set thick with cots, but by admiring a haberdashery drummer's line of neck-ties for an hour, I managed to get him to "will" me his room and bath when he departed that afternoon. Roos employed similar strategy with a jazz movie orchestra fiddler, but his train didn't pull out until four-thirty in the morning. A young reporter from the local paper called for an interview in the afternoon, and told us the story of the _Douglas_, the steamer which Captain McDermid had mentioned as having been lost in trying to take her to Portland. Selig had gone along to write the story of the run through Rock Island Rapids, the first to be reached and the place which was reckoned as the most dangerous she would have to pa.s.s.

When she had come out of that sinister gorge without mishap, he had them land him at the first convenient place in the quiet water below, from where he made his way to the railway and hurried back to Wenatchee with his story. That he had seen all the best of the excitement, he had no doubt. A quarter of an hour after Selig left her, the _Douglas_ was a total wreck on the rocks below Cabinet Rapids. He didn't know just how it had happened, but said we would find what was left of her still where she had struck.

Wenatchee is the liveliest kind of a town, and claims to be the largest apple-s.h.i.+pping point in the United States. It also has a daily paper which claims to be the largest in the world in a city of under ten thousand population. I can easily believe this is true. I have seen many papers in cities of fifty or a hundred thousand that were not to be compared with it for both telegraphic and local news. Banks are on almost every corner for a half dozen blocks of the main street of Wenatchee, and every one seems to have a bank account. I saw stacks of check-books by the cas.h.i.+ers' desks in restaurants and shops, and in one of the ice cream parlours I saw a young packette paying for her nut sundae with a check.

No word came from Captain McDermid during the day, and after endeavouring to reach him by phone all of the following forenoon, I reluctantly decided to push on without him. This was a good deal of a disappointment, not only because I felt that I was going to need his help mighty badly, but also because I was anxious to see more of him personally. A man who will take a steamer containing his wife and children down Rickey's Rapids of the Columbia isn't to be met with every day. Roos was anxious to get a picture of the "Farmer Who Would See the Sea" working his way down Rock Island Rapids, and as his machine was about the most valuable thing there was to lose in getting down there, it seemed up to me to do what I could. But for the first time since we pushed off to run the Big Bend, I unpacked and kept out my inflatable "Gieve" life-preserver waistcoat, which I had worn in the North Sea during the war, and which I had brought along on the "off chance." Selig came down with his Graflex to get a photo of our departure for the _World_, but declined an invitation for another run through Rock Island Rapids.

There is a long and lofty highway bridge spanning the Columbia half a mile below Wenatchee, which fine structure also appears to be used on occasion as a city dump. That it was functioning in this capacity at the very moment we were about to pa.s.s under it between the two mid-stream piers did not become apparent until the swift current had carried us so close that it was not safe to try to alter course either to left or right. There was nothing to do but run the gauntlet of the swervily swooping dust-tailed comets whose heads appeared to run the whole gamut of discard of a rather extravagant town of eight thousand people, all disdainful of "used" things. It would have been a rare chance to renew our outfit, only most of the contributions were speeding too rapidly at the end of their hundred-foot drop to make them entirely acceptable.

"Low bridge!" I shouted to Roos, and swung hard onto my oars, yelling a lung-full at every stroke in the hope that the busy dumpers might stay their murderous hands at the last moment. Vain hope! My final frightened upward glance told me that the nauseous cataclysm was augmenting rather than lessening.

I put _Imshallah_ into some mighty nasty looking rapids with a lot less apprehension than I drove her into that reeking second-hand barrage, that Niagara of things that people didn't want. Doubtless it was the fact that _I_ wanted the stuff still less than they did that lent power to my arms and gave me a strength far transcending that of ordinary endeavour.

Roos swore afterward that I lifted her right out of the water, just as a speeding hydroplane lifts at the top of its jump. This may have been so; but if it was, Roos sensed it rather than saw it, for his humped shoulders were folded tightly over his ducked head, like the wings of a newly hatched chicken. Anyhow, the little lady drove through safely, just as she always had. But where she had always emerged dewy-fresh and dancing jauntily on the tips of her toes from the roughest of rapids, here she oozed out upon an oil-slicked stream with the "Mark of the Beast" on her fore and aft. I mean that literally. That accursed little "White Wings" that sat up aloft to take toll of the life of poor Jack, must have had some kind of a slaughter-house dumping contract--and _Imshallah_ got a smothering smear of the proceeds. Also a trailing length of burlap and a bag of cinders. As the latter burst when it kissed off my shoulder, Roos' joke about my wearing sack-cloth-and-ashes was not entirely without point. The only article of value accruing was the shaving-brush which fell in Roos' lap. He felt sure it must have been thrown away by mistake, for it had real camel's-hair bristles, and he liked it better than his own--after the ashes had worked out of it.

And yet it might have been a lot worse. I only _heard_ the splash of the wash-boiler that must have hit just ahead of her, but the sewing machine that grazed her stern jazzed right across my line of vision.

Up to that time Surprise Rapids of the Big Bend of Canada had stood as the superlative in the way of a really nasty hole to go through; from then on "Surprise Rapids of Wenatchee Bridge" claimed pride of place in this respect.

Swabbing down decks as best we could without landing, we pushed ahead. I was anxious to get down to Rock Island Rapids in time to look over the channels, if not to start through, before dark. We should have known better than to treat a dainty lady like _Imshallah_ in that way. It was bad enough to have subjected her to the indignity of running the garbage barrage; not to give her a proper bath after it was unpardonable. At least that was the way she seemed to look at it, and so I never felt inclined to blame her for taking matters into her own hands. Wallowing through a sharp bit of rapid a mile below the bridge washed the outside of her bright and clean as ever, but it was the stain of that slaughter-house stuff on the inside that rankled. She was restive and cranky in the swirls and eddies all down a long stretch of slack water running between black basalt islands, and as the river narrowed and began to tumble over a boisterous rapid above the Great Northern Railway bridge, she began jumping about nervously, like a spirited horse watching his chance for a bolt.

It was Roos' business, of course, to watch where she was going, but he made no claim of being a qualified steersman; so that there was really no excuse for my failing to watch our capricious lady's symptoms and keep a steadying hand on her. Probably I _should_ have done so had not a freight train run out on the bridge just as we neared the head of the rapid, throwing out so striking a smoke-smudge against a background of sun-silvered clouds that I needs must try for a hurried snapshot. That done, we were close to the "V" of the drop-off, and I had just time to see that there were three or four rather terrifying rollers tumbling right in the heart of the riffle, evidently thrown up by a jagged outcrop of bedrock very close to the surface. I would never have chanced putting even a big _batteau_ directly into so wild a welter, but, with fairly good water to the left, there was no need of our pa.s.sing within ten feet of the centre of disturbance. The course was so plain that I do not recall even calling any warning to Roos as I sat down and resumed my oars. Each of us claimed the other was responsible for what followed, but I think the real truth of it was that _Imshallah_ had made up her mind to have a bath without further delay, and couldn't have been stopped anyhow.

I never did see just what hit us, nor how we were hit; for it all came with the suddenness of a sand-bagging. Roos was stroking away confidently, and appeared to be singing, from the movement of his lips.

The words, if any, were drowned in the roar. All at once his eyes became wild and he lashed out with a frenzied paddle-pull that was evidently intended to throw her head to the left. The next instant the crash came--sudden, shattering, savage. I remember distinctly wondering why Roos' eyes were s.h.i.+fted apprehensively upward, like those of a man who fancies he is backing away from a bombing airplane. And I think I recall spray das.h.i.+ng two or three lengths astern of us, before the solid battering ram of the water hit me on the back, and Roos in the face. And all _Imshallah_ did was to stand straight up on her hind legs and let little demi-semi-quivers run up and down her back like a real lady exulting in the tickle of a shower-bath. Then she lay down and let the river run over her; then reared up on her hind legs again. Twice or thrice she repeated that routine, when, apparently satisfied that her ablutions were complete, she settled down and ran the rest of the rapid sedately and soberly, and, I am afraid, without much help from either oars or paddle. I have always thought Roos was particularly happy in his description of how it looked for'ard just after that first big wave hit us. "The top of that comber was ten feet above your head," he said, "and it came curving over you just like the 'canopy' of a 'Jack-in-the-Pulpit.'"

With _Imshallah_ rather more than half full of water, and consequently not a lot more freeboard for the moment than a good thick plank, it was just as well that no more rapids appeared before we found a patch of bank flat enough to allow us to land and dump her. Fresh as a daisy inside and out, she was as sweet and reasonable when we launched her again as any other lady of quality after she has had her own way. Not far below the bridge we tied up near the supply-pipe of a railway pumping station on the left bank. With the black gorge of Rock Island Rapids three-quarters of a mile below sending up an ominous growl, this appeared to be the proper place to stop and ask the way.

The engineer of the pumping-station said that he knew very little about the big rapid, as he had only been on his present job for a week. He had only seen the left-hand channel, and, as an old sailor, he was dead certain no open boat ever launched could live to run the lower end of it. He said he thought the safest way would be to put the skiff on his push-car, run it down the tracks a couple of miles, and launch it below the worst of the rapids. I told him we might be very glad to do this as a last resort, but, as it would involve a lot of time and labour, I would like to look at the rapid first. He told us to make free of his bunk-house in case we spent the night there, and suggested we call in at a farm house a couple of hundred yards down the track and talk with an old man there, who would probably know all about the rapid.

That proved to be a good tip. The farmer turned out to be an old-time stern-wheeler captain, who had navigated the upper Columbia for many years in the early days. He was greatly interested in our trip, and said that we ought to have no great trouble with the rapids ahead, that is, as long as we didn't try to take undue liberties with them. The safest way to get through would be to land at the head of the big island that divided the channels and line right down the left side of it. It would be pretty hard work, but we ought not to get in wrong if we took our time. He was sorry he couldn't go down and look the place over with us, but it happened that his youngest daughter was being married that evening, and things were sort of crowding for the rest of the day.

_That_ explained why the yard was full of flivvers, and the numerous dressed-up men lounging around the porches. We decided that the groom was the lad, with an aggressively fresh-shaven gill, who was being made the b.u.t.t of a joke every time he sauntered up to a new group, and that the bride was the buxom miss having her chestnut hair combed at a window, with at least half a dozen other girls looking on.

Roos was very keen to have the wedding postponed to the following morning, and changed to an _al fresco_ affair which he could shoot with good light.

With a little study, he said, he was sure he could work it into his "continuity." Perhaps, for instance, the "Farmer-Who-Would-See-the-Sea"

might start them off on their honeymoon by taking them a few miles down river in his boat. That would lend "heart interest and...." I throttled that scheme in the bud before my impetuous companion could broach it to the princ.i.p.als. I wasn't going to tempt the providence that had saved me whole from the wrath of Jock o' Windermere by taking a chance with any more "bride stuff."

The black-walled gorge of Rock Island is one of the grimmest-looking holes on the Columbia, and of all hours of the day sunset, when the deep shadows are banking thick above the roaring waters, is the least cheery time to pay it a visit. Somewhat as at h.e.l.l Gate, the river splits upon a long, rocky island, the broader, shallower channel being to the right, and the narrower, deeper one to the left. The upper end of the right-hand channel was quiet and straight; indeed, it was the one I would have been prompted to take had not the old river captain at the farm-house inclined to the opinion that the lining on the other would be easier. The former had been the course Symons had taken, and he mentioned that the lower end was very crooked and rocky. I decided, therefore, to brave the difficulties that I could see something of in advance rather than to blunder into those I knew not of. Although the left channel began to speed up right from the head, I saw enough of it to be sure that we could run at least the upper two-thirds of it without much risk, and that there was then a good eddy from which to land on the side next to the railroad. This was the head of the main fall--an extremely rough cascade having a drop of ten feet in four hundred yards.

Down that we would have to line. I was quite in agreement with the pump-station man that no open boat would live in those wildly rolling waters. Fearful of complications, I restrained Roos from accepting an invitation to the wedding, and we turned in early for a good night's sleep at the pump-station bunk-house.

The game old octogenarian had asked me especially to hail him from the river in the morning, so that he could go down and help us through the rapids. I should have been glad indeed of his advice in what I knew would be a mighty awkward operation, but had not the heart to disturb him when I saw there was no curl of smoke from the kitchen chimney when we drifted by at eight o'clock. The roar of fast and furious revelry had vied with the roar of the rapids pretty well all night, culminating with a crescendo leading up to the old shoe barrage at about daybreak. It didn't seem quite human to keep the old boy lining down river all morning after lining up against that big barrel of "sweet cider" all night.... (No, I hadn't missed that little detail; that was one of the reasons I had kept Roos away). So we drifted on down toward the big noise alone. The pump-man promised he would come down to help as soon as his tank was filled, but that wouldn't be for an hour or more.

Rock Island Rapids are in a gorge within a gorge. The black water-scoured canyon with the foam-white river at the bottom of it is not over fifty feet deep in the sheer. Back of high-water mark there is a narrow strip of bench on either side, above which rises a thousand feet or more of brown bluff. The eastern wall still cast its shadow on the river, but the reflection of the straw-yellow band of broadening light creeping down the western bluff filled the gorge with a diffused golden glow that threw every rock and riffle into sharp relief. It was a dozen times better to see by than the blinding brilliance of direct light, and, knowing just what to expect for the next quarter-mile, I ran confidently into the head of the rapid. Early morning is the hour of confidence and optimism on the flowing road; evening the hour of doubt, indecision and apprehension.

A submerged rock at the entrance to the left channel, which I had marked mentally from the high bank the night before as an obstacle to be avoided, proved rather harder to locate from water level; but Roos spotted it in time to give it a comfortable berth in shooting by. Then the abrupt black walls closed in, and we ran for three hundred yards in fast but not dangerous water. The current took us straight into the eddy I had picked for a landing place, and the skiff slid quietly into a gentle swirling loop of back-water, with nothing but a huge jutting rock intervening between that secure haven and the brink of the fall. So far all had gone exactly as planned. Now we were to see how it looked for lining.

Roos set up on a shelf and cranked while I lined round the projecting rock, an operation which proved unexpectedly simple once it was started right. At my first attempt I failed to swing the boat out of the eddy, and as a consequence she was brought back against the rock and given rather a stiff b.u.mp. The next time I launched her higher up, and paying out plenty of scope, let her go right out into the main current and over the "intake" of the fall. It took brisk following up to keep the line from fouling, and after that was cleared I didn't have quite as much time as I needed to take in slack and brace myself for the coming jerk. The result was _Imshallah_ got such a way on in her hundred feet of run that, like a _locoed_ broncho pulling up and galloping off with its picket-pin, she took me right along over and off the big rock and into the water below. To my great surprise, where I was expecting to go straight into the whirlpool one usually finds behind a projecting rock, I landed in water that was both slack and comparatively shallow.

Recovering quickly from my stumble, I braced against the easy current and checked the runaway with little trouble. Roos, who had missed the last part of the action, wanted me to do that jump and stumble over again, but the ten foot flop down onto the not very deeply submerged boulders was a bit too much a shake-up to sustain for art's sake.