You have heard of Indians shooting rapids in their birch-bark canoes? And perhaps you have yourself sailed a toy boat on a stream, and made a dam of clay, and waited with more or less patience till the water rose nearly to the top, and then broken a bit of your dam out and made a waterfall and let your boat drift over the edge of it. You know how it goes slowly at first, then hesitates and sweeps on more and more quickly. Sometimes it upsets; and sometimes it shudders and strains and trembles and sways to one side and to the other, and at last rights itself and makes up its mind, and rushes on down the stream, usually to be entangled in the clump of rushes at the stream's next turn. This is what happened to that good yacht, the _Lightning Loose_. She shot over the edge of that dark smooth subterranean waterfall, hung a long breathless moment between still air and falling water, slid down like a flash, dashed into the stream below, shuddered, reeled, righted herself and sped on. You have perhaps been down the water chute at Earl's Court? It was rather like that. 'It's--it's all right,' said Philip, in a rather shaky whisper. 'She's going on all right.' 'Yes,' said Lucy, holding his arm very tight; 'yes, I'm sure she's going on all right.' 'Are we drowned?' said a trembling squeak. 'Oh, Max, are we really drowned?' 'I don't think so,' Max replied with caution. 'And if we are, my dear, we cannot undrown ourselves by screams.' 'Far from it,' said the parrot, who had for the moment been rendered quite speechless by the shock. And you know a parrot is not made speechless just by any little thing. 'So we may just as well try to behave,' it said. The lamps had certainly behaved, and behaved beautifully; through the wild air of the fall, the wild splash as the _Lightning Loose_ struck the stream below, the lamps had shone on, seemingly undisturbed. 'An example to us all,' said the parrot. 'Yes, but,' said Lucy, 'what are we to do?' 'When adventures take a turn one is far from expecting, one does what one can,' said the parrot. 'And what's that?' 'Nothing,' said the parrot. 'Philip has relieved Max at the helm and is steering a straight course between the banks--if you can call them banks. There is nothing else to be done.' There plainly wasn't. The _Lightning Loose_ rushed on through the darkness. Lucy reflected for a moment and then made cocoa. This was real heroism. It cheered every one up, including the cocoa-maker herself. It was impossible to believe that anything dreadful was going to happen when you were making that soft, sweet, ordinary drink. 'I say,' Philip remarked when she carried a cup to him at the wheel, 'I've been thinking. All this is out of a book. Some one must have let it out. I know what book it's out of too. And if the whole story got out of the book we're all right. Only we shall go on for ages and climb out at last, three days' journey from Trieste.'