explained. "Th' snags' telltales are plumb wiped out. I shore wish we war past Clay. There ain't a decent bank ter lie ag'in this side o' it."

For the next hour he used his utmost knowledge of the river, which had been developed almost into an instinct; and then he rounded one of the endless bends and straightened out the course with Clay Point half a mile ahead.

"Great Jehovah!" he muttered. "Look at Clay!"

The jutting point, stripped bare of trees, was cut as clean as though some great knife had sliced it. Under its[Pg 40] new front the river had cut in until, as they looked, the whole face of the bluff slid down into the stream, a slice twenty feet thick damming the current and turning it into a raging fury. Some hundreds of yards behind the doomed point the muddy torrent boiled and seethed through its new channel, vomiting trees, stumps, brush and miscellaneous rubbish in an endless stream. Off the point, and also where the two great currents came together again behind it two great whirlpools revolved with sloping surfaces smooth as ice, around which swept driftwood with a speed not unlike the horses of some great merry-go-round. The vortex of the one off the point was easily ten feet below the rim of its circumference, and the width of the entire affair was greater than the length of the boat. A peeled log, not quite water-soaked, reached the center and arose as vertical as a plumb line, swayed in short, quick circles and then dove from sight. A moment later it leaped from the water well away from the pool and fell back with a smack which the noise of the wind did not drown. To starboard was a rhythmic splashing of bare limbs, where a great cottonwood, partly submerged, bared its fangs. To the right of that was a towhead, a newly formed island of mud and sand partly awash.

[Pg 40]

The pilot cursed softly and jerked on the bell handle, the boat instantly falling into half speed. He did not dare to cut across the whirlpool, the snag barred him dead ahead, and it was doubtful if there was room to pass between it and the towhead; but he had no choice in the matter and he rang again, the boat falling into bare steerageway. If he ran aground he would do so gently and no harm would be done. So swift was the current that the[Pg 41] moment he put the wheel over a few spokes and shifted the angle between the keel-line and the current direction, the river sent the craft sideways so quickly that before he had stopped turning the wheel in the first direction he had to spin it part way back again. The snag now lay to 

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