"Say, Frank, have you noticed that we are going to have a hard paddle back against this current?"
The boys had been fishing about an hour when Harry spoke. So engrossed had they both been pulling in fish of a dozen strange varieties and brilliant hues that neither of the lads had noticed that the canoe had drifted down stream far from the starting point and that in fact when they looked up they were in an entirely strange part of the river.
"You are right, Harry," rejoined Frank, as he looked up at the steep banks on either side of them, "we have drifted a considerable distance. Come on, out with the paddles and we'll be getting back."
But it was one thing to talk of getting back and quite another thing to do it. The boys, after an hour of paddling, were dismayed to find that although their arms ached with the exertion and they were dripping with perspiration, they had made hardly any progress against the current.
"It's too much for us," gasped Frank.
"What on earth are we going to do?" asked Harry with blanched cheeks.
Frank glanced at the shore on either side. For a minute he had entertained a thought of landing and walking back along the beach. But there was no beach.
The river boiled along between narrow walls which shot sheer up from the water. There was not even a niche in their smooth surface to afford a foothold to a mountain goat. They were caught in a trap.
The only thing to do was to drift down the river and trust to luck to find a landing-place. In their extremity they shouted at the top of their voices to let their comrades know of their plight, but their cries were unanswered and they began to wish that they had saved their breath to use in the task of keeping the canoe steady in the current.
While they had been pondering their situation, moreover, they had been swept with almost incredible rapidity down the river. The walls here grew narrower and narrower and the water fairly boiled in its narrow confines. Its dark surface was flecked with white foam, and to make matters worse, as the walls closed in the light became fainter, till the boys were being carried downward through almost subterranean darkness.
In the intense gloom their white strained faces shone out like pallid beacon-lights.
"Hold her steady," said Frank in a tense voice as the canoe wobbled crazily in the swollen current.
"I'm doing the best I can," gasped out poor Harry desperately plying his paddle.
It the canoe was to get broadside onto the current, even for the fraction of a second, Frank well knew that nothing could save them. It was a terrible situation.
Helplessly they were being borne at dizzy speed to what seemed almost certain death—for certain it was that they could not hold out much longer. Already their overstrained muscles were only mechanically doing their duty, but before long Frank realized that even his-well-trained young body must collapse—and then, what?
Suddenly there was borne to their ears a sound that made both boys chill with terror.
It was a mighty roaring like the furious boiling of some giant kettle. A thousand shouting voices seemed blended into one to form the music, of this ominous orchestra. Louder the noise grew and louder, as the pass through which the river now tore like a runaway race-horse grew narrower and blacker.
What could the awful uproar mean?
They had not long to wait before the truth burst upon them. They were nearing, at what seemed express speed, a whirling, roaring mass of waters that shouted at them like some animal calling for its prey. The boys' cheeks blanched as they realized that nothing but a miracle could save them from being sucked into this watery abyss.
Desperately they plied their paddles but if they had been useless further up the stream they were doubly inefficient now. If they had stroked against the rushing current with feathers they could not have had less effect in checking the death rush of the canoe, which was tossed along on the racing tide like a chip of wood.
Suddenly the canoe was struck a terrific blow.
Before either boy could realize what had happened they were both struggling in the water. So dazed were they by the mishap that it was several minutes before they understood that they were clinging to the to the trunk of some huge tree. It was this trunk that had wrecked the canoe and thrown them overboard.
In reality, though, they were little better off now than they had been while the canoe was being whirled down the river. It looked as if they had been saved from one death only to face a worse. With all their might they clung side by side. Dripping wet, half-blinded and bruised by the battering they got as the trunk smashed from side to side of the narrow passage, the indomitable American pluck of the two lads yet held good in this extremity.
"Is it good-by, Frank?" Harry found strength to murmur.
"While there's life there's hope," came Frank's brave reply in his favorite axiom. "We'll live to fly the old Golden Eagle yet, let's hope."
There was no time for further talk, even had the boys been in any position to consider conversation. The trunk was rapidly nearing the whirlpool—and death.
Small wonder that brave as the boys were a despairing cry burst from their throats as they saw what seemed the end of their ride close upon them. It was as if they could feel the breath of the Pale Horseman already blowing chilly in their faces.
But suddenly a strange thing happened.
Both boys had closed their eyes and only moved their lips in prayer as they saw that inevitably in a few minutes they must be sucked into the maelstrom. Now, however, they opened them in amazement.
The swift rush of the log to which they clung like drowned rats had stopped.
It took them only a few seconds to take in what had occurred. The great log swinging one end toward the swirling current had jammed clear across the stream and for a time at any rate they were saved from immediate death. In their joy they clasped each other's hands warmly but their first rush of relief did not last long. As a matter of fact they were not any nearer safely than they had been a few minutes previous.
The log, it was true, was jammed across the stream, but the consequent backing up of the impetuous current caused it to rush across the boys' refuge in such volumes as to almost sweep them from their perches.
It was very evident that they could not hold put indefinitely in this position.
Their attention was attracted as they clung to their water-swept tree-trunk by a dark object whirling about in the boiling pool. It was swept dizzily round and round in ever decreasing circles toward the middle of the fatal vortex. Suddenly it shot downward out of sight, but as it did so Frank had seen something that kindled one ray of hope—though a feeble one. Before the canoe had taken the fatal downward plunge it had hesitated for a minute as though caught on something; and then the boy leader saw for the first time that in the center of the pool there was a rock, although the water that submerged it to the depth of an inch or so prevented its being seen at first glance.
Frank turned to Harry and told him of his discovery.
"If we are cast into the pool let us make up our minds to get to that rock. Keep your mind concentrated on it. Don't let the idea leave you for a second and perhaps—I say 'perhaps'—we can make it."
Harry shook his head despairingly.
"I can hardly keep my grip on this tree. I don't believe that I could possibly manage to swim even a few yards," he groaned.
"You must," said Frank sharply. "Don't give in now, Harry. Stick it out."
Then as a sudden thought struck him he continued.
"See here, it's no good our wasting our strength clinging to this trunk any longer. Sooner or later we shall be swept off and the longer we wait the less reserve strength we shall have. Let us leave go now and swim for it."
Whatever reply Harry might have tendered to this desperate proposal he was spared making, for at that moment a wave of more than ordinary force—caused by the backed-up water striking the log—struck him full in the face and before he knew it the boy had been washed from the tree trunk and was being carried like a straw down the stream.
As Harry felt himself being carried along there was only one thought in his mind. It was not of death. When death is right upon a man or a boy he rarely thinks of it, but casts about for the best means of saving himself. Nor does—as some imaginative writers have told us—a man's whole past life come before him at such moments. No—the instinct of self-preservation is strongest when a human being is in the direst need, and so it was that in Harry's mind one thought kept hammering away like the strokes of a tolling bell.
"Try-and-make-the-rock. Try-and-make-the-rock."
Frank's insistence had done this much. It had caused the boy to recollect the one hope of salvation that the desperate situation held out. As he was swept down the torrent Harry made no effort to swim. It would have been worse than useless and besides he needed to husband his strength for the final struggle he knew was upon him.
The next minute he felt a sickening swirling sensation and realized that he was in the whirlpool's death-grip at last.
Faster and faster the boy was hurried in ever decreasing circles. Dizzy, half-choked with water, blinded and almost exhausted Harry, with the tenacity of a bull dog, still clung tenaciously to the one idea:
"Try-and-make-the-rock. Try-and-make-the-rock."
Suddenly, he was flung against a hard substance. With outstretched fingers he clutched at the slimy surface as of what he realized was the end of his journey at last. The great stone was covered with slimy weed, however, and his grasping fingers refused to clutch at any friendly niche in its surface.
With a despairing cry the boy was being swept in to the terrible mouth of the pool when he felt himself seized and pulled up out of the grip of the torrent. He knew no more till he opened his eyes and found Frank by his side. Both boys were on the rock—sitting on it in two inches or more of water. Fortunately in that climate the water was not so chilly as to cause discomfort, but this was about the only crumb of satisfaction the situation held for them.
"Well done, old fellow," said Frank as Harry opened his eyes. "You had a narrow escape, though."
Harry could only look at his brother gratefully. How deep was his debt of gratitude to him both boys realized without their talking of it.
"How did you gain the rock, Frank?" asked Harry.
"When I saw you swept off the tree trunk I slipped off too," replied Frank, "and when I felt myself dragged into the pool I struck out for the rock. I confess, though, I didn't have much hope of reaching it till I was slammed into it with a blow that almost cracked my ribs and knocked all the wind out of me. I managed however to grab hold of a depression in the surface and maintain my grip on it. I had hardly dragged myself up when you were hurled against it. I thought I had lost you, for the water pulled like a draught-horse, but I managed to hold on to you and here we are."
"And a worse position we could not possibly be in," added Harry.
"Unless we were in there," retorted Frank pointing, not without a shudder, to the whirling open mouth of the pool which had sucked down the wreck of their canoe.
"What is it do you suppose?" asked Harry wonderingly.
"The mouth of a subterranean river I guess," replied Frank. "I have read of such things."
"But why didn't Desplaines warn us of our danger," said Harry bitterly, "if we ever get out of this I shall tell him my opinion of him pretty strongly. We might have been killed and we may yet."
"He did warn us," replied Frank calmly.
"He did?"
"Yes."
"I should like to know when?"
"When we shoved off."
"You mean when he shouted something we couldn't catch and pointed down the river?"
"That's it."
"I thought he meant there was better fishing down, here," snapped Harry indignantly, "what idiots we were."
"Yes; not to notice how we were drifting," rejoined Frank quietly, "it's no use to blame Mr. Desplaines for this pickle. We have only ourselves to be angry with. I don't suppose he ever thought that two boys would not notice how they were drifting in a ten mile current."
"The point is how are we ever going to get out of it?"
How indeed?
As the boys looked about they saw little to encourage them. The chasm in which they were beleaguered was not more than fifteen feet across, but on either side shot up walls of rock so steep and smooth that not even a fern could find root on their polished surfaces.
Where the whirlpool sank into the bowels of the earth the walls came together at an angle forming a sort of triangular prison. At the top of this trap the boys could see a strip of blue sky and the outlines of the graceful tops of some bulbous stemmed palms but nothing else. Once a vulture sailed across the strip and sighting the two boys came lower to investigate. The sight of the carrion bird made both of the boys shudder.
"Ugh, he scents a meal, he thinks we're dead already," cried Harry disgustedly.
The sound of his voice echoed gloomily among the rocks.
"We're dead already," came back in sepulchral tones.
"I shan't try to wake that echo up again," said Harry in a low tone and shivering at the uncanny voice of the rock.
Neither of the boys spoke for a long time. They sat there silently, occasionally standing up to get the stiffness out of their limbs till the strip of sky above began to darken to gray.
"Well, here goes!" exclaimed Harry suddenly.
Frank glanced sharply up. He did not like the wild tone in which the words were spoken.
"What is it?" he asked sharply.
"I'm tired of this, I'm going to swim for it," replied Harry with a foolish, hysterical laugh.
Frank saw what had happened. The boy had become half-delirious under the mental strain he had undergone.
"Sit down, old fellow," he said kindly, "help will come soon I am sure."
"Yes, a steamboat will come sailing down the river and take us home in the captain's cabin I suppose," said Harry foolishly.
But nevertheless Frank's stern command to "shut up" and not make a foot of himself brought him to his senses and he said no more till the stillness was broken by a sudden cry from above.
"Bosses—oh, bosses."
"Ahoy there; castaways!"
Frank looked up.
The cry of joy he gave set the echoes flying in the gloomy canyon.
It was the black face of Sikaso that was gazing down on them and beside it was Ben Stubbs' weather-beaten countenance. Behind them were Billy, Lathrop and the rest.
"Hold on there and we'll get you out of that in two shakes of a duck's tail," cheerily hailed the old adventurer. "We guessed you'd be here and we brought a rope as long as a man of war's cable with us. Lucky thing we did."
The next minute a long rope of vegetable fiber came snaking down the side of the cliff and to one end of it clung Ben Stubbs. As he reached the bottom—the rope being cautiously paid out from above by his companions—the old seaman swung himself outward from the face of the rock and "in a brace of shakes," as he would have said, stood alongside the two boys. In a second his sharp eye took in Harry's wild looks and hysterical greetings and realized what had happened.
"Now, Frank," he ordered, giving the young aviator the end of the rope—"catch hold tight and when you are ready give the word."
"But Harry—" gasped Frank, "I can't leave him. Let him go first."
"I'll bring him up. He can't look after himself in the shape he's in and you are too weak to attempt to help him. Now no talking back. I'm boss now. Up aloft with you. Haul away there!"
The next minute Frank, clinging to the rope, was being hauled cautiously up the side of the sheer cliff by careful hands and shortly he was in the arms of his friends.
Ben Stubbs—to whom the rope with a weight at the end of it had been swung pendulum wise—next appeared at the summit with Harry in his strong grip. But it was a white faced inanimate burden he carried. The boy had swooned.
"He'll be all right in a few minutes," said Ben Stubbs as M. Desplaines and the others all tried to explain at once to Frank how Sikaso had guessed what had happened when the boys did not return. The Krooman had led the party by secret native trails to the cliff top. Frank clasped the huge black's hand with real gratitude and tears of thankfulness brimmed in his eyes.
"How can I ever thank you," he said.
"Um—white boys keep away Pool of Death, Sikaso much pleased," replied the Krooman turning slowly away with a sad expression on his face.
"His own son was drowned in it several years ago," said M. Desplaines briefly.
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