Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/279

250 hard paddling. Then supper; after which, a slow and easy, meditative paddle in search of pine grove or sand bank. This was our regular daily programme, and its worth was shown by our excellent condition when we reached the end of the river.

Events by the way—how shall I recall them, crowded as they are? We were upset: it was in this way. We had carried our boat round a fall, where the logs ran so furiously that nothing else had a chance to run. At about eight o'clock in the evening we floated her, below the falls, intending just to paddle down till we found a place to sleep. We did not know, from the dusk, that the rapids extended for miles below the falls. We soon found the water extremely strong and swift, full of eddies and whirls, and mixed up with tumbling and pushing logs. It was the ugliest race we had seen or did see on all the river. We swept down like an arrow for about half a mile, and then a thunder-storm of extraordinary violence and continuity burst. The night became pitch-dark. We could only see the black river, running like a wolf at the gunwale, and the lightning zigzagging the night above. Suddenly, we realized that the logs on our left were stationary, while those in the stream on our right were tearing down like