But from Walla Walla to the sea was a dangerous stretch. At the Dalles camped robber Indians to pillage travelers as they portaged overland. Thompson kept sleepless vigil all night and by launching out at dawn before the mountain mists had lifted from the water gave ambushed foes the slip. Came a wash and a ripple in the current. It was the tide. The salt water smell set the explorer’s pulses beating. Then the blue line of the ocean washes the horizon of an opening vista like a swimming sky. The voyageurs gave a shout and beat the gun’els of the canoe. A swerve to left--chips floating on the water tell Thompson that Astor’s men are already here, and there stands the little palisaded post all raw in its newness with cannons pointing across the river from the fort gates. Precisely at 1 P. M., Monday, July 15, 1811, Thompson arrives at Astoria. The Astor men have beaten in the race to the Pacific. Thompson is just two months too late for the Nor’Westers to claim the mouth of the Columbia. Then all his old friends of the Athabasca, McDougall and the Stuarts and fighting John Clarke--all his old friends but Alex. McKay, who has been cut to pieces by the Indians in the massacre of “the _Tonquin’s_ crew,” all but McKay and Donald MacKenzie, who has not yet arrived from overland--rush down to welcome him. The Astorians receive the Nor’Westers with open arms. It is good fellowship. It is not good policy. “He had access everywhere,” writes Ross, a clerk in the employment of Astor. “He saw and examined everything.” He heard how the overland party of Astor’s men from the Missouri had not yet come. He probably heard, too, that the crew of the ship _Tonquin_ had been massacred, and he was not slow to guess that McDougall, head of Astor’s fort, was homesick for his old Northwest comrades.