He
happened for the moment to be obsessed by one of his canoe up-stream
panics, so he turned inland to a spot where the hill appeared
climbable, and started in to surmount the obstruction.
This was comparatively easy at first. Then the shoulder of the cliff
intervened. Dick mounted still a little higher up the hill, then
higher, then still higher. Far down to his left, through the trees,
broiled the River. The slope of the hill to it had become steeper than
a roof, and at the edge of the eaves came a cliff drop of thirty feet.
Dick picked his way gingerly over curving moss-beds, assisting his
balance by a number of little cedar trees. Then something happened.
Dick says the side of the hill slid out from under him. The fact of the
matter is, probably, the skin-moss over loose rounded stones gave way.
Dick sat down and began slowly to bump down the slant of the roof. He
never really lost his equilibrium, nor until the last ten feet did he
abandon the hope of checking his descent. Sometimes he did actually
succeed in stopping himself for a moment; but on his attempting to
follow up the advantage, the moss always slipped or the sapling let go
a tenuous hold and he continued on down. At last the River flashed out
below him. He saw the sheer drop. He saw the boiling eddies of the
Halfway Pool, capable of sucking down a saw-log. Then, with a final
rush of loose round stones, he shot the chutes feet first into space.
In the meantime Billy and I repeated our experience of the two previous
days, with a few variations caused by the necessity of passing two
exceptionally ugly rapids whose banks left little footing.
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