The heavy barge seemed to pause for an instant on the edge of a precipice with half her length in mid-air before her bow dropped heavily into a curve of water that was like the hollow of a great green shell. The roar that followed was deafening. The sheet of water that broke over the boat for an instant shut out the sun. Then she came up like a clumsy Newfoundland, with the water streaming from the platform and swishing through the machinery, and all on board drenched to the skin.
Bruce stood at his post unshaken, throwing his great strength on the sweep this way and that--endeavoring to keep it in the centre of the current--in the middle of the tortuous channel through which the boat was racing like mad. And the hind-sweepman, doing his part, responded, with all the weight of body and strength he possessed, to Bruce's low-voiced orders almost before they had left his lips.
Quick and tremendous action was imperative for there were places where a single instant's tardiness meant destruction. There was no time in that mad rush to rectify mistakes. A miscalculation, a stroke of the sweep too little or too much, would send the heavily loaded boat with that tremendous, terrifying force behind it, crashing and splintering on a rock like a flimsy-bottomed strawberry box.
For all of seven miles Bruce never lifted his eyes, straining them as he wielded his sweep for the deceptive, submerged granite boulders over which the water slid in a thin sheet. Immovable, tense, he steered with the sureness of knowledge and grim determination until the boat ceased to leap and ahead lay a little stretch of peace.
Then he turned and looked at the lolling tongues behind him that seemed still reaching for the boat and straightening up he shook his fist: "You didn't get me that time, dog-gone you, and what's more you won't!"
All three boats were coming, rearing and plunging, disappearing and reappearing. Anxiously he watched Smaltz work until a bend of the river shut them all from sight. It was many miles before the river straightened out again but when it did he saw them all riding safely, with Smaltz holding his place in line.
Stretches of white water came at frequent intervals all day but Bruce slept on the platform of his barge that night more soundly than he ever had dared hope. Each hour that passed, each rapid that they put behind them, was so much done; he was so much nearer his goal.
On the second night when they tied up, with the Devil's Teeth, the Black Canyon and the Whiplash passed in safety, Bruce felt almost secure, although the rapid that he dreaded most remained for the third and last day.