would leap and boil in their furious, headlong career, shaking and
tossing the helpless victim of their might with a vicious strength from
which there would be no escape, until, in the climax of the river's
madness, the object of its angry sport would be dashed against the
cliff, and torn, and crushed, and hammered by the terrific weight of the
rushing flood against that rocky anvil, into a battered and shapeless
wreck.

The drifting boat drew nearer and nearer. It reached the point where the
curve of the opposite bank draws in to form the narrow raceway of the
rapids. It began to feel the stronger pull of those hidden hands
that had carried it so easily down The Bend. And then--and then--the
unguided, helpless craft responded to the gentle pressure of some swirl
or crosscurrent in the main flow of the stream, and swung a little
to one side. A few feet farther, and the new impulse became stronger.
Yielding easily to the current that drew it so gently across the
invisible dividing-line between safety and destruction, the boat
swung in toward the shore. A minute more, and it had drifted into that
encircling curve of the bank where the current of the eddy carried it
around and around.

The boat seemed undecided. Would it hold to the harbor of safety into
which it had been drawn by the friendly current? Would it swing out,
again, into the main stream, and so to its own destruction?

Three times the bow, pointing out from the eddy, crossed the
danger-line, and, for a moment, hung on the very edge. Three times, the
invisible hands which held it drew it gently back to safety. And so,
finally, the little craft, so helpless, so alone, amid the many currents
of the great river, came to rest against the narrow shelf of land at the