The boat reached the edge of the current; then it caught it full. With a jump like a race-horse at the signal it was shooting down the toboggan slide of water toward the jutting granite ledge. The blanched bailer in the stern could have touched it with his hand as the boat whipped around the corner, clearing it by so small a margin that it seemed to him his heart stood still.
Bruce's muscles turned to steel as he gripped the sweep handle for the last mad rush. He looked the personification of human daring. The wind blew his hair straight back. The joy of battle blazed in his eyes. His face was alight with a reckless exultation. But powerful, fearless as he was, it did not seem as though it were within the range of human skill or possibilities to place a boat in that toboggan slide of water so that it would cut the current diagonally, miss the rock nearest shore and shoot across to miss the channel boulder and that yawning hole beneath. But he did, though he skimmed the wide-mouthed well so close that the bailer stared into its dark depths with bulging eyes.
The boat leaped in the spray below, but the worst was passed and Bruce and his hind sweepman exchanged the swift smile of satisfaction which men have for each other at such a time.
"Keep her steady--straight away." He had not dared yet to lift his eyes to look behind save for that one glance.
"My God! they're comin' right together!"
The sharp cry from the hind sweepman made him turn. They had rounded the ledge abreast and Smaltz's boat inside was crowding Saunders hard. Saunders and his helper were working with superhuman strength to throw the boat into the outer channel in the fraction of time before it started on the final shoot. Could they do it! could they! Bruce felt his lungs--his heart--something inside him hurt with his sharp intake of breath as he watched that desperate battle whose loss meant not only sunk machinery but very likely death.
Bruce's hands were still full getting his own boat to safety. He dared not look too long behind.
"They're goin' to make it! They're almost through! They're safe!" Then--shrilly--"They're gone! they've lost a sweep."
Bruce turned quickly at his helper's cry of consternation, turned to see the hind-sweep wildly threshing the air while the boat spun around and around in the boiling water, disappearing, reappearing, sinking a little lower with each plunge. Then, at the risk of having every rib crushed in, they saw the bailer throw his body across the sweep and hold it down before it quite leaped from its pin. The hind-sweepman was scrambling wildly to reach and hold the handle as it beat the air. He got it--held it for a second--then it was wrenched out of his hand. He tried again and again before he held it, but finally Bruce said huskily---"They'll make it--they'll make it sure if Saunders can hold her a little longer off the rocks."