Ken got a grip upon himself. He looked down the long, narrow lane of glancing water. Some hundred yards on, it made another turn round a corner, and from this dim curve came the roar. The current was hurrying the boat toward it, but not fast enough to suit Ken. He wanted to see the worst, to get into the thick of it, to overcome it. So he helped the boat along. A few moments sufficed to cover that gliding stretch of river, yet to Ken it seemed never to have an end. The roar steadily increased. The current became still stronger. Ken saw eruptions of water rising as from an explosion beneath the surface. Whirlpools raced along with the boat. The dim, high walls re-echoed the roaring of the water. The first thing Ken saw when he sailed round that corner was a widening of the chasm and bright sunlight ahead. Perhaps an eighth of a mile below the steep walls ended abruptly. Next in quick glance he saw a narrow channel of leaping, tossing, curling white-crested waves under sunlighted mist and spray. Pulling powerfully back and to the left Ken brought the boat alongside the cliff. Then he shipped his oars. “Hold hard,” he yelled, and he grasped the stone. The boys complied, and thus stopped the boat. Ken stood up on the seat. It was a bad place he looked down into, but he could not see any rocks. And rocks were what he feared most. “Hold tight, boys,” he said. Then he got Pepe to come to him and sit on the seat. Ken stepped up on Pepe’s shoulders and, by holding to the rock, was able to get a good view of the rapid. It was not a rapid at all, but a constriction of the channel, and also a steep slant. The water rushed down so swiftly to get through that it swelled in the center in a long frothy ridge of waves. The water was deep. Ken could not see any bumps or splits or white-wreathed rocks, such as were conspicuous in a rapid. The peril here for Ken was to let the boat hit the wall or turn broadside or get out of that long swelling ridge. He stepped down and turned to the white-faced boys. He had to yell close to them to make them hear him in the roar. “I--can--run--this--place. But--you’ve got--to help. Pull--the canvas--up higher in the stern--and hold it.” Then he directed Pepe to kneel in the bow of the boat with an oar and be ready to push off from the walls.