Reaching the eaves he hung on for a second, and then dropped the ten feet or so to the ground. Then crouching like an Indian he darted through the brush till he reached the side of the old flume.
He noted with satisfaction that the water was still running in a good stream down the mouldering trench. With a quick, backward look, Nat cast off his coat and boots, and flinging them aside picked up a board about six feet long that lay near by.
The water at the head of the flume traversed a little level of ground, and here it ran more slowly than it did when it reached the grade below. Extending himself full length on the board, just as a boy does on a sleigh on a snowy hill, Nat held on for a moment.
He gave one look about him at the moonlit hills, the dark pines and the rocky cliffs. Then, with a murmured prayer, he let go.
The next instant he was shooting down through the flume at a rate that took his breath away. All about him roared the voices of the water while the crosspieces over his head whizzed by in one long blur.
Faster than he had ever travelled before in his life Nat was hurtled along down the flume. Water dashed upward into his face, half choking him and occasionally his board would hit the wooden side with a bump that almost threw him off. His knuckles were bruised and bleeding and his head dizzy from the motion. It was the wildest ride that the lad, or any other lad for that matter, had ever undertaken.
Suddenly, ahead of him--above the noise of the rushing water--came another sound, a deep-throated, sullen thunder. As he shot along with the speed of a projectile, Nat realized what the strange sound betokened. The end of the flume. Cal had told them that the raised water-course discharged its contents into a big pool at that point. With a sudden sinking of the heart Nat realized that he had forgotten to inquire how high the drop was. If it was very high--or if there was but little water in the pool below the flume--he would be dashed to pieces, or injured so that he could not swim, and thus drown.
But even as the alarming thought was in his mind, Nat felt himself shot outward into space. Instinctively his hands came together and he dived downward, entering the water about twenty feet below him, with a clean dive.