Canoe Mates in Canada | Page 2

anger than fear.
Now and then he shook his curly head, and muttered something; and once a name passed his lips in anything but a friendly fashion--that of Alexander Gregory.
Swifter grew the current, giving plain warning to one so well versed as this lad must be in the vagaries of these mad rivers of the Silent Land that presently it would be racing furiously down a steep incline, with razoredge rocks on every side, apparently only too eager to rend asunder the frail canoe of the adventurous cruiser.
Still Owen Dugdale continued to ply the nimble paddle, weaving it in and out like a shuttle.
He kept to the middle of the river when it would seem to at least have been the part of wisdom had he edged his craft closer to either shore, so that he might, in time, make a safe landing in preference to trusting himself to the mercy of the wild rapids, in which his frail bullboat would be but as a chip in the swirl of conflicting waters.
Already had the vanguard of the storm swept down upon him.
An inky pall began to shut out the daylight, and when a sudden flash of lightning cleft the low-hanging clouds overhead the effect was perfectly staggering.
The roar of thunder that followed quick upon its heels was like the explosion of a twelve-inch gun as heard in the steel-jacketed turret of a modern battleship.
Again and again was the rushing river, with its grim forest-clad shores lighted up by the rapid-fire electric flashes.
All around crashed the loud-toned thunderclaps, rumbling and roaring until the whole affair became a perfect pandemonium; and brave indeed must be the soul that could gaze upon it without dismay and flinching.
It was just then, before the rain had begun to descend, and while the artillery of heaven flashed and roared with all the fury of a Gettysburg, that Owen Dugdale found himself plunging into the dangerous rapids, ten times more to be feared under such conditions than ordinary.
Possibly he may have regretted his rashness in sticking to the middle of the channel until it was too late to change his course; but apparently the solitary young Canuck was at the time in somewhat of a desperate frame of mind, and recked little what might be the result of his mad act of defiance to the combined powers of tempest and boiling rapids.
At least he showed no signs of shrinking from the consequences.
Beyond shifting his weight a trifle, as if to settle himself better for the desperate work that faced him, he remained just as before, on his knees.
Crouching amidships, lie held his paddle poised as if ready to thrust it into the swirling water at a second's notice, to stay the progress of the canoe as it lunged toward a threatening rock, or glided too near a roaring whirlpool, where disaster was certain to follow.
Owen Dugdale was no novice at shooting rapids, though never before could he have undertaken such a fierce fight as the one in which he was now engaged, for the combination of the elements made it simply appalling.
The stirring scene might have appealed to the instinct of an artist; but so far as the lad was concerned he had only eyes for the perils with which he was surrounded, and his whole soul seemed wrapped up in the prompt meeting of each emergency as it flashed before him.
A dozen times he would have met with sudden disaster but for the instantaneous manner in which his hand followed the promptings of his brain.
Even then it was a mighty close shave more than once, for the boat rubbed up against several snags in whirling past, any one of which would have sunk the frail craft had it been a head-on collision.
Once he had to paddle like a madman to keep from being sucked into the largest whirlpool along the course; which seemed to reach out eager fingers, and strive to the utmost to engulf him in its gluttonous maw.
Thanks to the almost incessant lightning, Owen was enabled to see these perils in time to take action, else he must have been speedily overwhelmed in the fury of the rushing waters.
While the time might have seemed an eternity to the brave lad who battled for his very life, in reality it could not have been more than a couple of minutes at most that he was shooting down that foamy descent, dodging hither and thither as the caprice of the rapids or the impetus of his paddle dictated.
Just below him was the finish of the dangerous fall, and as so often happens, the very last lap proved to be more heavily charged with disaster than any of those above, even though they appeared to be far worse.
Being a son of the wilderness, Owen Dugdale had probably never