By eight o'clock, all was ready and they pushed slowly out into the
stream. Agnew took the steering oar, Enoch, his usual place, with
Jonas behind him.
The river was wild and swift here, but, after they had worked carefully
and painfully out of the aftermath of the falls, the current was
unobstructed for several hours. All the morning, Jonas watched eagerly
for traces of the Na-che but up to noon, none appeared. The sky was
cloudy, threatening rain. The walls, now smooth, now broken by
pinnacles and shoulders, were sad and gray in color. Milton sometimes
slept uneasily, but for the most part he lay with lips compressed, eyes
on the gliding cliffs.
About an hour before noon, the familiar warning roar of rapids reached
their ears. Rounding a curve, carefully, they snubbed the Ida to a
rock while Agnew clambered ashore for an observation. Just below them
a black wall appeared to cut at right angles across the river bed. The
river sweeping round the curve which the Ida had just compassed, rushed
like the waters of a mill race against the unexpected obstacle and
waves ten to twenty feet high told of the force of the meeting. Agnew
with great difficulty crawled along the shore until he could look down
on this turmoil of waters.
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