behind him for a single instant, with his silent, joyous laugh, --
"down we go, of a sartinty! Heave her starn up, boy; farther up
with her starn!"

The rest was like the passage of the viewless wind. Eau-douce
gave the required sweep with his paddle, the canoe glanced into
the channel, and for a few seconds it seemed to Cap that he was
tossing in a caldron. He felt the bow of the canoe tip, saw the
raging, foaming water careering madly by his side, was sensible
that the light fabric in which he floated was tossed about like an
egg-shell, and then, not less to his great joy than to his surprise,
he discovered that it was gliding across the basin of still water
below the fall, under the steady impulse of Jasper's paddle.

The Pathfinder continued to laugh; but he arose from his knees, and,
searching for a tin pot and a horn spoon, he began deliberately to
measure the water that had been taken in the passage.

"Fourteen spoonfuls, Eau-douce; fourteen fairly measured spoonfuls.
I have, you must acknowledge, known you to go down with only ten."

"Master Cap leaned so hard up stream," returned Jasper seriously,
"that I had difficulty in trimming the canoe."

"It may be so; no doubt it _was_ so, since you say it; but I have
known you go over with only ten."

Cap now gave a tremendous hem, felt for his queue as if to ascertain
its safety, and then looked back in order to examine the danger
he had gone through. His safety is easily explained. Most of the