If the toil of descending the Nile was not equal to that experienced in the ascent, the skill and vigilance required of the pilots was even greater. Only a few days' journey had been completed when the column halted at the head of a long series of cataracts. Here the Dongolese boatmen had been put to their utmost strength to haul up the boats through the boiling, writhing channel, and the question was, could any boat go down it and live? General Brackenbury gave orders that none but the Canadians should be entrusted with the descent; so, early in the morning, the voyageurs walked down the stream to survey it. They pronounced the channel bad, but not impossible, while one old St. Lawrence pilot sniffed contemptuously and declared that the Lachine would make this puddle look "seek." But the Nile cataract was bad enough, as Scotty realised, when he found himself among the first called to go down. Dan was his bowman and the stroke oar was a hardy old Scotch sergeant. Upon both of these he could rely with certainty. Nevertheless, as he steered out into the middle of the river, he realised that they had good need of all their courage and resource. On an overhanging rock above him stood the commander with some of his staff, anxiously watching the experiment. The shore was lined with soldiers, as though they had come to witness a boat-race. Scotty had a fleeting glimpse of them as he raced past, and then his boat was caught in the swift current and shot forward with lightning speed. The men bent to their oars with all the might of their brawny arms, to give their helmsman more power, Dan stood in the bow, alert and tense, his paddle ready, and Scotty held the tiller in an iron grip. The channel curved sharply to right and left; at the quickest turns great rocks stood in mid-stream over which the angry waters boiled and roared. At many points an instant's hesitation on his own part, Scotty well knew, or a second's relaxation of Dan's vigilance, would hurl boat and crew to destruction. They were in it now, dashing through a blinding rain of spray, leaping, turning, dodging, twisting, as though the boat were a living creature pursued. Down they shot through the boiling zig-zag current, now avoiding great, jagged rocks by a hair's-breadth, now bounding like a deer over a smooth incline, now plunging into a seething white billow; and, when at last they swept round into the quiet bay at the foot of the cataract, Dan leaped up, and waving his paddle on high uttered a wild war-whoop learned long ago in the swamps of the Oro. There was an answering cheer from the group of men waiting at the landing. "Well done, Big Scalper!" cried the foreman. A young naval officer who had just ridden down from the head of the rapid turned quickly at the words. "What, Big Scalper, is that you?" he cried as the pilots stepped from the boat. "How is it you're not hanged yet?"