Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/374

Rh narrow slopes of ten or twenty feet as if we were falling, and then shot round a rock, flinging the whole weight of our bodies on the steering-paddle. The tall stones ahead seemed to be rushing at us with the velocity of an ocean steamer.

All the time we were painfully conscious of the presence of the incisive edges under water, as one might feel the nearness of burglars' knives in the night. If we struck one of these stones on a downward shoot, it would rip the canoe from bow to stern.

Moseley steered skilfully, and we cleared two-thirds of the tortuous descent without a shock. A quarter of a mile ahead we saw the smooth water at the foot of the rift. We had crossed the river, and were running down on the Pennsylvania shore. Suddenly, the channel we were in divided at a great white stone, the wider water going to the left, toward the centre of the river, and a narrow black streak keeping straight down to the right.

A memory of the warning came to me, "Keep to the right of the big rock,—if you can." But it was too late. A man could not hear his own shout in such an uproar. The white rock rushed past us. The canoes ahead had turned with the main stream, and were in the centre of the river in a flash. Suddenly both canoes ahead were