a halt, and old Mossyback stuck his head out of water, and openin' his
great glassy eyes like the moon in a mist, 'How do you like that?'
said he, in a jeerin' sort of way. 'All right,' said I; 'go it while
you're young.' I didn't care about appearin' skeered or uneasy, but
I'd have given a couple of month's wages just then, to have been on
dry land. 'Well,' said he, 'I guess we'll be gittin' towards home.'
And away he started for the Upper Saranac, and up the river, across
Round Lake, and right up over the rapids we went. Two or three times I
made up my mind that I was a goner, as the water piled up around me
along over the falls; but somehow our very speed made our boat glance
upward at such times, and skim along the surface like a duck. We went
boundin' from hillock to hillock, on the mad waters, till we entered
the broad lake and went skiving about again among the islands.

"All at once he seemed to take a notion to go down towards the bottom;
so shortenin' the line some fifty foot or more, he hoisted his great
tail straight up towards the sky, and down he went, the boat standing
up on end, and somehow the waters didn't seem to close above us, so
rapid was our descent. It was tight work, as you may guess, to hold on
under such circumstances, but I managed to keep my place. How deep we
went I wont undertake to say, but this much is quite sartin, we went
down so far that I couldn't see out at the hole we went in at. There
are some mighty big fish away down in them parts, you may bet your
life on that; trout that it wouldn't be pleasant to handle.

"By-and-bye we started for daylight again. The fish had to stand out
of the way as we rushed like an express train towards the surface;
them that didn't we made a smash of. One bull head, I remember, about
twice as long as one of our boats wasn't quick enough; the bow of the
boat struck him about in the middle and cut him in two like a knife.