The bows shot under the white water below the fall, lifted to the first wave, knocking up foam out of foam, and so dived to the next, quivering like a reed shaken in the hand. Dominique straightened himself on his knees. In a moment he was working his paddle like a madman, striking broad off with it on this side and that, forcing the canoe into its course, zigzagging within a hand's breadth of rocks which, at a touch, would have broken her like glass, and across the edge of whirlpools waiting to drown a man and chase his body round for hours within a few inches of the surface; and all at a speed of fifteen to eighteen miles an hour, with never an instant's pause between sight and stroke. The Indian in the stern took his cue from Dominique; now paddling for dear life, now flinging his body back as with a turn of the wrist he checked the steerage. The priest sat with a white drenched face; a brave man terrified. He felt the floor of the world collapsing, saw its forests reeling by in the spray. It cracked like a bubble and was dissolved in rainbows--wisps caught in the rocks and fluttering in the wind of the boat's flight. Then, as the pressure on heart and chest grew intolerable, the speed began to slacken and he drew a shuddering breath; but his brain still kept the whirl of the wild minutes past and his hand scarcely relaxed its grip on the gunwale. As a runaway horse, still galloping, drops back to control, so the canoe seemed to find her senses and leapt at the waves with a cunning change of motion, no longer shearing through their crests, but riding them with a long and easy swoop. Still Father Launoy did not speak. He sat as one for whom a door has been held half-open, and closed again, upon a vision. Yet when he found his tongue--which was not until they reached the end of the white water, and Dominique, after panting a while, headed the canoe for shore--his voice did not shake. "It was a bold thought of these men, or a foolhardy, to strike across the Wilderness," he said meditatively, in the tone of one picking up a talk which chance has interrupted. "There are many ways through those woods," Dominique answered. "Between here and Fort Niagara you may hear tell of a dozen perhaps; and the Iroquois have their own." "Let us hope that none of theirs crosses the one you and Bateese taught to Monsieur Armand. The Seigneur will be uneasy about his son when he hears what 'Polyte and Damase report; and Monsieur Etienne and Mademoiselle Diane will be uneasy also." "But this Ojibway saw nothing of M. Armand or his party." "No news is good news. As you owe the Seigneur your duty, take your guests up to Fort Amitie to-morrow and let them be interrogated." "My Father, must I go?" There was anguish in Dominique's voice. "Surely Jo Lagasse or Pierre Courteau will do as well?--and there is much work at Boisveyrac which cannot be neglected."