Very quickly the news spread through the little town that four Yankees were going down the Race, and by the time all was ready for passing the boats over a practicable part of the dam, the whole population, male and female, including summer boarders in the bewildering toilettes of the period, were ranged along the banks, with the exception of those who came to lend a hand, and a squad headed by the local hotel-keeper, who strove to dissuade the party from what he represented as a rash venture. The hotel-keeper in fact was very kind, offering to provide good rooms over night and send the boats round the Race in a wagon in the morning. But the white water was all the while roaring its invitation and drowning his arguments, and though a witness was finally brought who, having only one leg, declared that he had "run" the rapids, and that the squadron couldn't do it, the temptation was too strong to be resisted, so one after another, with safe intervals between, the cruisers paddled out into the flashing water, and then for a few minutes, with every sense on the alert, every nerve strained, no one had an eye for anything save sunken rocks, treacherous swirls of the current, and the hundred indications which to the canoeist indicate the deepest water and the safest channel. It seemed only a few seconds, but the better part of a mile had been passed when the four waited for one another in the first reach of quiet water that afforded us a resting place. Each had grazed a few rocks in the first rapid, but all had passed triumphantly and without visible mishap beyond the ken of the hotel keeper, and the villagers, and were content. Half the Race, however, was yet to be run, and there was barely enough of daylight left for the undertaking. "The stream runs fast, The rapids are near, and the daylight past,"