Only one hope remained. By the left shore, crowding thirty feet out over the water, was a glacier-like snowbank. Solidly joined to the shore as it was, this bank did not heave and roll as did the free ice. Only beneath it the black waters raced. Between the hard packed snow and the river’s surface was a broad dark line. This was an air space where the snow had been worn away by higher water.
“He can’t go under,” Gordon Duncan breathed. “He’d be killed. He must jump for the solid snow. It’s his only hope.”
The Indians in the skin canoe were battling the current to bring their canoe ashore. As for Gordon Duncan and Faye, they had eyes only for the drama that was being enacted there before them.
“Bravo!” murmured Gordon Duncan as a great dog, leaping far and wide, made the snow bar in safety. One, two, three, four, the dogs were away.
And now, now! Faye breathed in little gasps. The recluse, standing erect, motionless, prepared to leap. Now he bent low, now he sprang straight up and away.
But now. What happened? Did the current give the raft a sudden turn? Did the old man’s strength suddenly fail? His leap fell short. He struck the snow, tottered there for a second; then, as the raft with its load of precious green gold shot into the darkness beneath the overhanging snowbar, he tottered and fell full into the raging flood.
“He’s gone!” exclaimed Gordon Duncan. “Lost! Lost forever!”
The next instant their boat, guided by the trusty natives, bumped on a shelving bank and they were quickly drawn up to safety.
In the meantime, as if to veil the catastrophe, a fog drifting down over all, hid all, ice, snow and rushing river, from their view. Ten minutes later a resounding roar told them that something terrific was happening on the river.
“The ice jamb is broken,” Gordon Duncan said quietly. “The current is now free. It came too late. We have lost!”
Urged on by the impatient hunchback, Johnny fought his way forward through tangled willows, over rock piles and down treacherous slopes of melting snow until of a sudden, with an involuntary shout of joy, he came plump against a large dugout turned upside down upon the ground.
To launch this craft, clumsy as it was, required but a moment’s time. Such was the magnificent strength of the hunchback.