We did this
precariously, with a rope. The cold water was beginning to tell on our
vitality, so that twice we went ashore and made hot tea. Just below the
Halfway Pool we began to do a little figuring ahead, which is a bad
thing. The Halfway Pool meant much inevitable labour, with its two
swift rapids and its swirling, eddies, as sedulously to be avoided as
so many steel bear-traps. Then there were a dozen others, and the three
miles of riffles, and all the rest of it. At our present rate it would
take us a week to make the Falls. Below the Halfway Pool we looked for
Dick. He was not to be seen. This made us cross. At the Halfway Pool we
intended to unload for portage, and also to ferry over Dick and the
setter in the lightened canoe. The tardiness of Dick delayed the game.
However, we drew ashore to the little clearing of the Halfway Camp,
made the year before, and wearily discharged our cargo. Suddenly,
upstream, and apparently up in the air, we heard distinctly the excited
yap of a dog. Billy and I looked at each other. Then we looked
upstream.
Close under the perpendicular wall of rock, and fifty feet from the end
of it, waist deep in water that swirled angrily about him, stood Dick.
I knew well enough what he was standing on--a little ledge of shale not
over five or six feet in length and two feet wide--for in lower water I
had often from its advantage cast a fly down below the big boulder. But
I knew it to be surrounded by water fifteen feet deep.
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