Look out for that rock on the right, Robert!" Young Lennox, with a swift and powerful motion of the paddle, shot the canoe back toward the center of the river, and then the three tried to hold it there as they sped on.
"Three or four hundred yards more," said Tayoga, "and we can draw into the smooth water we wish." "And not a minute too soon," said Willet.

"It seems to me I can hear the rain coming now in a deluge, and the waves on the river make me think of some I've seen on one of the big lakes.

Listen to that, will you!" A huge tree, blown down, fell directly across the stream, not more than twenty yards behind them.

But the fierce and swollen waters tearing at it in torrents would soon bear it away on the current.
"Manitou was watching over us then," said Tayoga with the same gravity.
"As sure as the Hudson runs into the sea, he was," said Willet in a tone of reverence.

"If that tree had hit us we and the canoe would all have been smashed together and a week later maybe the French would have fished our pieces out of the St.Lawrence." Robert, who was farthest forward in the canoe, noticed that the cliff ahead, hollowed out at the base by the perpetual eating of the waters, seemed to project over the stream, and he concluded that it was the place in Tayoga's mind.
"Our shelter, isn't it ?" he asked, pointing a finger by the lightning's flare.
Tayoga nodded, and the three, putting their last ounce of strength into the sweep of the paddles, sent the canoe racing over the swift current toward the haven now needed so badly.