Part 6

Then he held to the bow an instant longer, wading a little farther down. This was ticklish business, and all depended upon Ken. He got the stern of the boat straight in line with the channel he wanted to run, then he leaped aboard and made for the oars. The boat sped down. At the bottom of this incline was a mass of leaping green and white waves. The blunt stern of the boat made a great splash and the water flew over the boys. They came through the roar and hiss and spray to glide into a mill-race current.

“Never saw such swift water!” exclaimed Ken.

This incline ended in a sullen plunge between two huge rocks. Ken saw the danger long before it became evident to his companions. There was no other way to shoot the rapid. He could not reach the shore. He must pass between the rocks. Ken pushed on one oar, then on the other, till he got the boat in line, and then he pushed with both oars. The boat flew down that incline. It went so swiftly that if it had hit one of the rocks it would have been smashed to kindling wood. Hal crouched low. George’s face was white. And Pepe leaned forward with his big arms outstretched, ready to try to prevent a collision.

Down! down with the speed of the wind! The boat flashed between the black stones. Then it was raised aloft, light as a feather, to crash into the back-lashers. The din deafened Ken; the spray blinded him. The boat seemed to split a white pall of water, then, with many a bounce, drifted out of that rapid into little choppy waves, and from them into another long, smooth runway.

Ken rested, and had nothing to say. Pepe shook his black head. Hal looked at his brother. George had forgotten his rifle. No one spoke.

Soon Ken had more work on hand. For round another corner lay more fast water. The boat dipped on a low fall, and went down into the midst of green waves with here and there ugly rocks splitting the current. The stream-bed was continually new and strange to Ken, and he had never seen such queer formation of rocks. This rapid, however, was easy to navigate. A slanting channel of swift water connected it with another rapid. Ken backed into that one, passed through, only to face another. And so it went for a long succession of shallow rapids.

A turn in the winding lane of cypresses revealed walls of gray, between which the river disappeared.

“Aha!” muttered Ken.

“Ken, I’ll bet this is the place you’ve been looking for,” said Hal.

The absence of any roar of water emboldened Ken. Nearing the head of the ravine, he stood upon the seat and looked ahead. But Ken could not see many rods ahead. The ravine turned, and it was the deceiving turns in the river that he had feared. What a strange sensation Ken had when he backed the boat into the mouth of that gorge! He was forced against his will. Yet there seemed to be a kind of blood-tingling pleasure in the prospect.

The current caught the boat and drew it between the gray-green walls of rock.

“It’s coming to us,” said the doubtful George.

The current ran all of six miles an hour. This was not half as fast as the boys had traveled in rapids, but it appeared swift enough because of the nearness of the overshadowing walls. In the shade the water took on a different coloring. It was brown and oily. It slid along silently. It was deep, and the swirling current suggested power. Here and there long, creeping ferns covered the steep stone sides, and above ran a stream of blue sky fringed by leaning palms. Once Hal put his hands to his lips and yelled: “Hel-lo!” The yell seemed to rip the silence and began to clap from wall to wall. It gathered quickness until it clapped in one fiendish rattle. Then it wound away from the passage, growing fainter and fainter, and at last died in a hollow echo.

“Don’t do that again,” ordered Ken.

He began to wish he could see the end of that gorge. But it grew narrower, and the shade changed to twilight, and there were no long, straight stretches. The river kept turning corners. Quick to note the slightest change in conditions, Ken felt a breeze, merely a zephyr, fan his hot face. The current had almost imperceptibly quickened. Yet it was still silent. Then on the gentle wind came a low murmur. Ken’s pulse beat fast. Turning his ear down-stream, he strained his hearing. The low murmur ceased. Perhaps he had imagined it. Still he kept listening. There! Again it came, low, far away, strange. It might have been the wind in the palms. But no, he could not possibly persuade himself it was wind. And as that faint breeze stopped he lost the sound once more. The river was silent, and the boat, and the boys--it was a silent ride. Ken divined that his companions were enraptured. But this ride had no beauty, no charm for him.

There! Another faint puff of wind, and again the low murmur! He fancied it was louder. He was beginning to feel an icy dread when all was still once more. So the boat drifted swiftly on with never a gurgle of water about her gunwales. The river gleamed in brown shadows. Ken saw bubbles rise and break on the surface, and there was a slight rise or swell of the water toward the center of the channel. This bothered him. He could not understand it. But then there had been many other queer formations of rock and freaks of current along this river.

The boat glided on and turned another corner, the sharpest one yet. A long, shadowy water-lane, walled in to the very sides, opened up to Ken’s keen gaze. The water here began to race onward, still wonderfully silent. And now the breeze carried a low roar. It was changeable yet persistent. It deepened.

Once more Ken felt his hair rise under his hat. Cold sweat wet his skin. Despite the pounding of his heart and the throb of his veins, his blood seemed to clog, to freeze, to stand still.

That roar was the roar of rapids. Impossible to go back! If there had been four sets of oars, Ken and his comrades could not row the heavy boat back up that swift, sliding river.

They must go on.

*X*

*LOST!*

“Ken, old man, do you hear that?” questioned Hal, waking from his trance.

George likewise rose out of his lazy contentment. “Must be rapids,” he muttered. “If we strike rapids in this gorge it’s all day with us. What did I tell you!”

Pepe’s dark, searching eyes rested on Ken.

But Ken had no word for any of them. He was fighting an icy numbness, and the weakness of muscle and the whirl of his mind. It was thought of responsibility that saved him from collapse.

“It’s up to you, old man,” said Hal, quietly.

In a moment like this the boy could not wholly be deceived.

Ken got a grip upon himself. He looked down the long, narrow lane of glancing water. Some hundred yards on, it made another turn round a corner, and from this dim curve came the roar. The current was hurrying the boat toward it, but not fast enough to suit Ken. He wanted to see the worst, to get into the thick of it, to overcome it. So he helped the boat along. A few moments sufficed to cover that gliding stretch of river, yet to Ken it seemed never to have an end. The roar steadily increased. The current became still stronger. Ken saw eruptions of water rising as from an explosion beneath the surface. Whirlpools raced along with the boat. The dim, high walls re-echoed the roaring of the water.

The first thing Ken saw when he sailed round that corner was a widening of the chasm and bright sunlight ahead. Perhaps an eighth of a mile below the steep walls ended abruptly. Next in quick glance he saw a narrow channel of leaping, tossing, curling white-crested waves under sunlighted mist and spray.

Pulling powerfully back and to the left Ken brought the boat alongside the cliff. Then he shipped his oars.

“Hold hard,” he yelled, and he grasped the stone. The boys complied, and thus stopped the boat. Ken stood up on the seat. It was a bad place he looked down into, but he could not see any rocks. And rocks were what he feared most.

“Hold tight, boys,” he said. Then he got Pepe to come to him and sit on the seat. Ken stepped up on Pepe’s shoulders and, by holding to the rock, was able to get a good view of the rapid. It was not a rapid at all, but a constriction of the channel, and also a steep slant. The water rushed down so swiftly to get through that it swelled in the center in a long frothy ridge of waves. The water was deep. Ken could not see any bumps or splits or white-wreathed rocks, such as were conspicuous in a rapid. The peril here for Ken was to let the boat hit the wall or turn broadside or get out of that long swelling ridge.

He stepped down and turned to the white-faced boys. He had to yell close to them to make them hear him in the roar.

“I--can--run--this--place. But--you’ve got--to help. Pull--the canvas--up higher in the stern--and hold it.”

Then he directed Pepe to kneel in the bow of the boat with an oar and be ready to push off from the walls.

If Ken had looked again or hesitated a moment he would have lost his nerve. He recognized that fact. And he shoved off instantly. Once the boat had begun to glide down, gathering momentum, he felt his teeth grind hard and his muscles grow tense. He had to bend his head from side to side to see beyond the canvas George and Hal were holding round their shoulders. He believed with that acting as a buffer in the stern he could go pounding through those waves. Then he was in the middle of the channel, and the boat fairly sailed along. Ken kept his oars poised, ready to drop either one for a stroke. All he wanted was to enter those foaming, tumultuous waves with his boat pointed right. He knew he could not hope to see anything low down after he entered the race. He calculated that the last instant would give him an opportunity to get his direction in line with some object.

Then, even as he planned it, the boat dipped on a beautiful glassy incline, and glided down toward the engulfing, roaring waves. Above them, just in the center, Ken caught sight of the tufted top of a palm-tree. That was his landmark!

The boat shot into a great, curling, back-lashing wave. There was a heavy shock, a pause, and then Ken felt himself lifted high, while a huge sheet of water rose fan-shape behind the buffer in the stern. Walls and sky and tree faded under a watery curtain. Then the boat shot on again; the light came, the sky shone, and Ken saw his palm-tree. He pulled hard on the right oar to get the stern back in line. Another heavy shock, a pause, a blinding shower of water, and then the downward rush! Ken got a fleeting glimpse of his guiding mark, and sunk the left oar deep for a strong stroke. The beating of the waves upon the upraised oars almost threw him out of the boat. The wrestling waters hissed and bellowed. Down the boat shot and up, to pound and pound, and then again shoot down. Through the pall of mist and spray Ken always got a glimpse, quick as lightning, of the palm-tree, and like a demon he plunged in his oars to keep the boat in line. He was only dimly conscious of the awfulness of the place. But he was not afraid. He felt his action as being inspirited by something grim and determined. He was fighting the river.

All at once a grating jar behind told him the bow had hit a stone or a wall. He did not dare look back. The most fleeting instant of time might be the one for him to see his guiding mark. Then the boat lurched under him, lifted high with bow up, and lightened. He knew Pepe had been pitched overboard.

In spite of the horror of the moment, Ken realized that the lightening of the boat made it more buoyant, easier to handle. That weight in the bow had given him an unbalanced craft. But now one stroke here and one there kept the stern straight. The palm-tree loomed higher and closer through the brightening mist. Ken no longer felt the presence of the walls. The thunderous roar had begun to lose some of its volume. Then with a crash through a lashing wave the boat raced out into the open light. Ken saw a beautiful foam-covered pool, down toward which the boat kept bumping over a succession of diminishing waves.

He gave a start of joy to see Pepe’s black head bobbing in the choppy channel. Pepe had beat the boat to the outlet. He was swimming easily, and evidently he had not been injured.

Ken turned the bow toward him. But Pepe did not need any help, and a few more strokes put him in shallow water. Ken discovered that the boat, once out of the current, was exceedingly loggy and hard to row. It was half full of water. Ken’s remaining strength went to pull ashore, and there he staggered out and dropped on the rocky bank.

The blue sky was very beautiful and sweet to look at just then. But Ken had to close his eyes. He did not have strength left to keep them open. For a while all seemed dim and obscure to him. Then he felt a dizziness, which in turn succeeded to a racing riot of his nerves and veins. His heart gradually resumed a normal beat, and his bursting lungs seemed to heal. A sickening languor lay upon him. He could not hold little stones which he felt under his fingers. He could not raise his hands. The life appeared to have gone from his legs.

All this passed, at length, and, hearing Hal’s voice, Ken sat up. The outfit was drying in the sun; Pepe was bailing out the boat; George was wiping his guns; and Hal was nursing a very disheveled little racoon.

“You can bring on any old thing now, for all I care,” said Hal. “I’d shoot Lachine Rapids with Ken at the oars.”

“He’s a fine boatman,” replied George. “Weren’t you scared when we were in the middle of that darned place?”

“Me? Naw!”

“Well, I was scared, and don’t you forget it,” said Ken to them.

“You were all in, Ken,” replied Hal. “Never saw you so tuckered out. The day you and Prince went after the cougar along that cañon precipice--you were all in that time. George, it took Ken six hours to climb out of that hole.”

“Tell me about it,” said George, all eyes.

“No stories now,” put in Ken. “The sun is still high. We’ve got to be on our way. Let’s look over the lay of the land.”

Below the pool was a bold, rocky bluff, round which the river split. What branch to take was a matter of doubt and anxiety to Ken. Evidently this bluff was an island. It had a yellow front and long bare ledges leading into the river.

Ken climbed the bluff, accompanied by the boys, and found it covered with palm-trees. Up there everything was so dry and hot that it did not seem to be jungle at all. Even the palms were yellow and parched. Pepe stood the heat, but the others could not endure it. Ken took one long look at the surrounding country, so wild and dry and still, and then led the way down the loose, dusty shelves.

Thereupon he surveyed the right branch of the river and followed it a little distance. The stream here foamed and swirled among jagged rocks. At the foot of this rapid stretched the first dead water Ken had encountered for miles. A flock of wild geese rose from under his feet and flew down-stream.

“Geese!” exclaimed Ken. “I wonder if that means we are getting down near lagoons or big waters. George, wild geese don’t frequent little streams, do they?”

“There’s no telling where you’ll find them in this country,” answered George. “I’ve chased them right in our orange groves.”

They returned to look at the left branch of the river. It was open and one continuous succession of low steps. That would have decided Ken even if the greater volume of water had not gone down on this left side. As far as he could see was a wide, open river running over little ledges. It looked to be the easiest and swiftest navigation he had come upon, and so indeed it proved. The water was swift, and always dropped over some ledge in a rounded fall that was safe for him to shoot. It was great fun going over these places. The boys hung their feet over the gunwales most of the time, sliding them along the slippery ledge or giving a kick to help the momentum. When they came to a fall, Ken would drop off the bow, hold the boat back and swing it straight, then jump in, and over it would go--souse!

There were so many of these ledges, and they were so close together, that going over them grew to be a habit. It induced carelessness. The boat drifted to a brow of a fall full four feet high. Ken, who was at the bow. leaped off just in time to save the boat. He held on while the swift water surged about his knees. He yelled for the boys to jump. As the stern where they sat was already over the fall it was somewhat difficult to make the boys vacate quickly enough.

“Tumble out! Quick!” bawled Ken. “Do you think I’m Samson?”

Over they went, up to their necks in the boiling foam, and not a second too soon, for Ken could hold the boat no longer. It went over smoothly, just dipping the stern under water. If the boys had remained aboard, the boat would have swamped. As it was, Pepe managed to catch the rope, which Ken had wisely thrown out, and he drifted down to the next ledge. Ken found this nearly as high as the last one. So he sent the boys below to catch the boat. This worked all right. The shelves slanted slightly, with the shallow part of the water just at the break of the ledge. They passed half a dozen of these, making good time, and before they knew it were again in a deep, smooth jungle lane with bamboo and streamers of moss waving over them.

The shade was cool, and Ken settled down in the stern-seat, grateful for a rest. To his surprise, he did not see a bird. The jungle was asleep. Once or twice Ken fancied he heard the tinkle and gurgle of water running over rocks. The boat glided along silently, with Pepe rowing leisurely, George asleep, Hal dreaming.

Ken watched the beautiful green banks. They were high, a mass of big-leafed vines, flowering and fragrant, above which towered the jungle giants. Ken wanted to get out and study those forest trees. But he made no effort to act upon his good intentions, and felt that he must take the most of his forestry study at long range. He was reveling in the cool recesses under the leaning cypresses, in the soft swish of bearded moss, and the strange rustle of palms, in the dreamy hum of the resting jungle, when his pleasure was brought to an abrupt end.

“Santa Maria!” yelled Pepe.

George woke up with a start. Hal had been jarred out of his day-dream, and looked resentful. Ken gazed about him with the feeling of a man going into a trance, instead of coming out of one.

The boat was fast on a mud-bank. That branch of the river ended right there. The boys had come all those miles to run into a blind pocket.

Ken’s glance at the high yellow bank, here crumbling and bare, told him there was no outlet. He had a sensation of blank dismay.

“Gee!” exclaimed Hal, softly.

George rubbed his eyes; and, searching for a cigarette, he muttered: “We’re lost! I said it was coming to us. We’ve got to go back!”

*XI*

*AN ARMY OF SNAKES*

For a moment Ken Ward was utterly crushed under the weight of this sudden blow. It was so sudden that he had no time to think; or his mind was clamped on the idea of attempting to haul the boat up that long, insurmountable series of falls.

“It’ll be an awful job,” burst out Hal.

No doubt in the mind of each boy was the same idea--the long haul, wading over slippery rocks; the weariness of pushing legs against the swift current; the packing of supplies uphill; and then the toil of lifting the heavy boat up over a fall.

“Mucho malo,” said Pepe, and he groaned. That was significant, coming from a _mozo_, who thought nothing of rowing forty miles in a day.

“Oh, but it’s tough luck,” cried Ken. “Why didn’t I choose the right branch of this pesky river?”

“I think you used your head at that,” said Hal. “Most of the water came down on this side. Where did it go?”

Hal had hit the vital question, and it cleared Ken’s brain.

“Hal, you’re talking sense. Where did that water go? It couldn’t all have sunk into the earth. We’ll find out. We won’t try to go back. We _can’t_ go back.”

Pepe shoved off the oozy mud, and, reluctantly, as if he appreciated the dilemma, he turned the boat and rowed along the shore. As soon as Ken had recovered somewhat he decided there must be an outlet which he had missed. This reminded him that at a point not far back he had heard the tinkle and gurgle of unseen water flowing over rocks.

He directed Pepe to row slowly along the bank that he thought was the island side. As they glided under the drooping bamboos and silky curtains of moss George began to call out: “Low bridge! Low bridge!” For a boy who was forever voicing ill-omened suggestions as to what might soon happen he was extraordinarily cheerful.

There were places where all had to lie flat and others where Pepe had to use his _machete_. This disturbed the _siesta_ of many aquatic birds, most of which flew swiftly away. But there were many of the gray-breasted, blue-backed bitterns that did not take to flight. These croaked dismally, and looked down upon the boys with strange, protruding eyes.

“Those darn birds’ll give me the willies,” declared Hal. “George, you just look like them when you croak about what’s coming to us.”

“Just wait!” retorted George. “It’ll come, all right. Then I’ll have the fun of seeing you scared silly.”

“What! You’ll not do anything of the kind!” cried Hal, hotly. “I’ve been in places where such--such a skinny little sap-head as you--”

“Here, you kids stop wrangling,” ordered Ken, who sensed hostilities in the air. “We’ve got trouble enough.”

Suddenly Ken signaled Pepe to stop rowing.

“Boys, I hear running water. Aha! Here’s a current. See--it’s making right under this bank.”

Before them was a high wall of broad-leaved vines, so thick that nothing could be seen through them. Apparently this luxuriant canopy concealed the bank. Pepe poked an oar into it, but found nothing solid.

“Pepe, cut a way through. We’ve got to see where this water runs.”

It was then that Ken came to a full appreciation of a _machete_. He had often fancied it a much less serviceable tool than an ax. Pepe flashed the long, bright blade up, down, and around, and presently the boat was its own length in a green tunnel. Pepe kept on slashing while Ken poled the boat in and the other boys dumped the cut foliage overboard. Soon they got through this mass of hanging vine and creeper. Much to Ken’s surprise and delight, he found no high bank, but low, flat ground, densely wooded, through which ran a narrow, deep outlet of the river.

“By all that’s lucky!” ejaculated Ken.

George and Hal whooped their pleasure, and Pepe rubbed his muscular hands. Then all fell silent. The deep, penetrating silence of that jungle was not provocative of speech. The shade was so black that when a ray of sunlight did manage to pierce the dense canopy overhead it resembled a brilliant golden spear. A few lofty palms and a few clumps of bamboo rather emphasized the lack of these particular species in this forest. Nor was there any of the familiar streaming moss hanging from the trees. This glen was green, cool, dark. It did not smell exactly swampy, but rank, like a place where many water plants were growing.

The outlet was so narrow that Ken was not able to use the oars. Still, as the current was swift, the boat went along rapidly. He saw a light ahead and heard the babble of water. The current quickened, and the boat drifted suddenly upon the edge of an oval glade, where the hot sun beat down. A series of abrupt mossy benches, over which the stream slid almost noiselessly, blocked further progress.

The first thing about this glade that Ken noted particularly, after the difficulties presented by the steep steps, was the multitude of snakes sunning themselves along the line of further progress.

“Boys, it’ll be great wading down there, hey?” he queried.

Pepe grumbled for the first time on the trip. Ken gathered from the native’s looks and speech that he did not like snakes.