"I would stop you if I could." "Of course," said Seaforth, smiling.

"Still, you see you can't, and when you go out mining with feather-brained companions must take the consequences." Alton, who said nothing further, apparently went to sleep, and there was silence in the tent save for the roar of water and the rattle of Okanagan's knife.
They launched the canoe with the first of the daylight, dragging her through the crackling ice fringe under the bitter frost, and as they slid down the smooth green flow towards the stupendous rent in the mountain side the river poured through, Okanagan glanced towards it and then at the still figure lying huddled in the blankets in the bottom of the canoe.
"That, I figure, is one of the most useful men in the Dominion, and between Somasco and the place in England he has a good deal in his hands," he said.
Seaforth understood him, and smiled grimly.

"We brought nothing into this world--and we'll be very close to the next one in a few more minutes," he said.

"Hadn't you better get way on, Tom ?" They dipped the paddles, and the canoe slid on smoothly under the clear sunlight and the frost towards the film of mist where the oily green now broke up into the mad white tumult that poured down the canon.
Then the strokes quickened, the craft lurched beneath them, and the sunlight was blotted out as they plunged into spray-filled dimness.
High through the vapour towered smooth walls of stone, and the river that rebounded from them was piled in a white track of foam midway between.

The canoe swept onwards down it apparently with the speed of a locomotive, and Seaforth, crouching in the bows, gripped his paddle with bleeding fingers that had split at the knuckles with the frost.
He watched the smooth walls whirl by him mechanically, and remembered that the canon could not last forever.