CHAPTER VII.

A FEARFUL ADVENTURE.

At this moment, Little Rifle chanced to look across the stream, and instead of one Blackfoot, he saw two come forth from the middle lodge, and sauntering to the edge of the river, pause, and, while gesticulating and conversing earnestly, they first looked up the current, and then down again.

“They will see the canoe! they will discover the lad and he will be lost!” was the agonized thought of the little fellow, who, turning his gaze in the same direction, just managed to descry the boat, as it glided out of sight around the bend in the river.

The Blackfeet indeed acted as if they had discovered something suspicious; for one of them pointed down-stream, and the other following the direction indicated, seemed to be gazing intently as though his keen vision had detected the same thing.

Little Rifle could plainly hear their guttural voices, as they spoke in louder and more excited tones, but he was unable to catch or comprehend a word they uttered. Fortunately they remained in view but a few minutes, when they turned about and strode into their lodge at a much more rapid gait than they had employed in leaving.

The watcher behind the rocks was determined to wait no longer. Extricating himself as carefully and hastily as possible from his station, he placed himself so far away from the stream, that he felt secure from observation in case the Blackfeet should come forth again, and then he hurried down the river with all the speed of which he was capable.

Sinewy and active as was the boy, he made rapid progress, and shortly after came back to the margin opposite the point where he had last seen the canoe, and, as he did so, a sudden terror almost took the breath from his body.

For directly below this bend were the falls of which we have made mention, and of which he would not have thought again, even at this moment, but for the overwhelming roar that broke upon his ear, as he emerged from the forest, where the sound met with no obstruction.

He cast one hurried glance down the stream, and gracious Heaven! what did he see?

There was the canoe, still near the center of the stream, and within a hundred yards of the falls, toward which it was rushing with the speed of a race-horse.

But the occupant was no longer asleep or insensible to the frightful peril of his position. He had evidently awakened to a sense of his dreadful danger, the instant he had passed around the bend in the river, which not only gave the rush and whirl a terrible power, but showed him the surging current, and the mist rising from the churning foam below.

From one danger into a greater, he had striven with the desperation of despair to bring the canoe out of its plunge into destruction; but had either broken his paddle or had lost it; for he was now using his rifle, as a substitute, grasping the barrel and driving the stock through the water, with a fierce rapidity, that proved that he understood that his life depended upon his success.

That one terrified look showed Little Rifle that it was beyond the power of the poor lad to accomplish the task, and that he was only insuring his destruction by continuing the effort.

“Throw your gun down! jump overboard, and swim for land! It is your only hope!”

These words were shouted by our hero, who swung his hat aloft and screeched like a madman. It may be that his clear, musical voice possessed such a penetrating power, that they reached the ear of his strange friend in his extremity; for he ceased his frantic efforts, and turned his white, imploring face toward him, as if to thank him for the warning even though it could aid him naught.

“Jump! jump! I tell you!” called out Little Rifle, rushing into the water to his knees, in his extreme solicitude, “throw your gun aside, and you can do it. Wait a dozen seconds more and you are lost!”

The boy did wait the dozen seconds. He must have understood the words that were shouted to him, for he sat back in the stern of the canoe, folded his arms, and looking intently at Little Rifle, sadly shook his head, and then raising his hand waved it in greeting toward him.

And as he did so, he could not have spoken more plainly, had he used the word.

“I understand your advice; but it is too late! I must go over the falls to my death, and good-by!”

It was a strange and impressive sight to see this mere boy, after fighting so bravely against fate, meet his doom with the stoicism of an Indian war-chief. There was no wailing or outcry, no frenzied flinging of himself in the boat, as it might be expected that such a one would do, when he saw himself gliding so swiftly and irresistibly toward death; but he sat back in the position we have described, and after his salutation to Little Rifle, turned his face away, and looked at the waterfall before him.

The action of the doomed lad awed and thrilled the heart of Little Rifle, who felt that it was no ordinary character that he saw before him; for not one boy in a thousand could meet death with such heroism. For one instant, the agonized watcher closed his eyes to shut out the dreadful sight, and then yielding to an overmastering attraction, he leaped back out of the water, and dashed at headlong speed, down the bank, over rocks and through undergrowth, until he reached a point directly below the falls, from which he could look up and see the vast sheet of water, as it poured over the ledge into the seething, furious hell of foam and froth below. Here he paused and gazed upward.

The river just before making its final plunge was compressed into a kenyon-like passage not more than one-half its width a hundred yards further up. This deepened and gave it far greater velocity, the current shooting forward like a mill-race, the surface being covered with little eddying waves, as if they were sensible of the awful caldron into which they were so soon to make their boiling plunge. But the entire volume, sweeping forward with an indescribable grandeur and majesty, moved over the ledge in a solid, compact body, fully a dozen feet in depth and without a break. Descending perhaps a rod, in the same solid volume of a deep green color, it could be seen the outer surface of this mass began to assume, here and there, a white, feathery appearance, which rapidly increased, until, something less than a hundred feet below, it resembled an Alpine avalanche--all of a glistening, snowy white. Here where the water was arrested, there was a perfect pandemonium; the billows turning and rolling over each other, throwing the blinding spray far up on both banks, while a thousand currents and counter-currents struggled and fought with each other with such desperate fierceness, that it was not until the stream had reached a point several hundred yards away, and had expanded into its usual breadth, that it assumed any thing like its natural appearance.

The din that filled the ears of Little Rifle, as he stood on a flat, projecting slab of rock, where his clothing was speedily saturated, was enough to drive an ordinary person frantic, although it scarcely affected one who had spent such a portion of his life in the wilderness as had he.

But here he might have shouted his voice away, and not the slightest sound would have been heard even by himself. He could do nothing but stand and watch and wait, with that freezing terror all through his nerves that made him feel as if he must forever remain rooted to the spot.

“But where is the canoe?” he thought, when it seemed to him that he had been waiting an interminable period, while, from the very nature of the case, he had been there only a few seconds. “Could it have gone over while I was making my way to the spot? No, that can not be, for I almost flew. Oh! is there no hand to save him?”

At that instant Little Rifle caught sight of the canoe, as it glided swiftly out to view, seeming to poise itself for a moment in mid-air, like an eagle balancing himself for his earthward sweep, and then the boat, with its brave occupant, shot downward, with a velocity that seemed almost to baffle the eye.

It appeared as if the water as it swept over the ledge of rocks was of unusual density, for the canoe rested on the surface, like a feather, as though it had lost all weight.

Little Rifle saw the prow, following the curve of the river, turn downward, so that it stood perfectly perpendicular, the white-faced but resolute lad who occupied it grasping the sides with his hands so as to maintain his place.

In this way it made the descent, for, perhaps, fifty feet, when the stern, probably retaining the momentum longer than the lighter bow, advanced so much further that the canoe turned a complete sommersault, both it and the boy shooting from view in the roaring, plunging and churning hell of waters at the bottom of the falls.

“Lost! lost! gone to his last account!” gasped Little Rifle, recovering from the paralysis in which he stood up to this instant. “He showed that he was a brave lad, and he deserved a better fate-- There! can it be?”

Although, as we have shown, the efforts of the poor boy to work his canoe in to shore and out of the frightful current failed, yet it resulted, despite the appearance to the contrary, in getting quite a distance toward the bank whereon Little Rifle stood, and he noted the fact, with some surprise, as it came over the falls.

As he stood on the wet rock, looking at the foaming abyss before him, something dark shot up to view almost at his feet. Looking downward, he had just time to see that it was a part of the canoe--about a half--when it drove out of sight again, in the resistless grasp of the current.

And the same glance that showed him this, showed also the face of the boy who had made the fearful plunge, only for an instant, like his view of the canoe. The face, white and motionless, rose from the water, and then sunk out of view, as it sped down the current, with scarcely less speed than the river possessed directly above the falls themselves.

That one look was sufficient for Little Rifle. A sudden hope came to his heart that the lad might still have the breath of life in his body, and placing his gun upon the rock at his feet, he concentrated all his strength and made a leap directly toward the spot where he had seen the face, shouting at the same time, with all the strength of which he was capable, in the hope of arousing him to do something for himself.

The most skillful swimmer can not fight his way through froth and foam, its specific gravity being too slight for it to support his weight, while the danger is that he will be strangled before he can reach the water that will support him. Little Rifle fully understood this before he made his daring plunge, but the glimpse that he had obtained of the boy had proved that he had something in his favor that fully counterbalanced this. The very violence of the foamy waters was such that it drove all foreign bodies to the surface for a second or two, without any effort upon their part.

Little Rifle kept his senses about him, as he felt himself sinking downward, downward, in the resistless grasp of the current. He had taken a deep inspiration during the instant he was making his flight through the air, and he now held his breath until he could gain the chance to renew it.

The crash and roar, the blinding mist and spinning eddies, the arrow-like descent, these were enough to drive all the wits from a man’s brain, and the boy had hardly thrown himself into the vortex when the conviction flashed upon him, that the strange boy was not only past all hope but that he had put himself in the same position by his mad plunge into the water, in the hope of rescuing him.

But Little Rifle was too brave a lad to yield up his life without a struggle, and, with all the strength and skill of which he was master, he made a desperate effort to get his face to the surface only for a second--a single instant--that he might gain a single breath of the all-revivifying air.