Swiftly his eyes measured the situation.  The rapids ran between an almost precipitous shore on one side and a deep forest on the other.  He saw at a glance that it was the forest side over which he must make the portage, and this was the shore opposite him and farthest away.  Swinging his canoe at a 45-degree angle he put all the strength of body and arms into the sweep of his paddle.  There would be just time to reach the other shore before the current became dangerous.  Above the sweep of the rapids he could now hear the growling roar of a waterfall below.

It was at this unfortunate moment that Miki decided to venture one more experiment with Neewa.  With a friendly yip he swung out one of his paws.  Now Miki’s paw, for a pup, was monstrously big, and his foreleg was long and lanky, so that when the paw landed squarely on the end of Neewa’s nose it was like the swing of a prize-fighter’s glove.  The unexpectedness of it was a further decisive feature in the situation; and, on top of this, Miki swung his other paw around like a club and caught Neewa a jolt in the eye.  This was too much, even from a friend, and with a sudden snarl Neewa bounced out of his nest and clinched with the pup.

Now the fact was that Miki, who had so ingloriously begged for mercy in their first scrimmage, came of fighting stock himself.  Mix the blood of a Mackenzie hound—­which is the biggest-footed, biggest-shouldered, most powerful dog in the northland—­with the blood of a Spitz and an Airedale and something is bound to come of it.  While the Mackenzie dog, with his ox-like strength, is peaceable and good-humoured in all sorts of weather, there is a good deal of the devil in the northern Spitz and Airedale and it is a question which likes a fight the best.  And all at once good-humoured little Miki felt the devil rising in him.  This time he did not yap for mercy.  He met Neewa’s jaws, and in two seconds they were staging a first-class fight on the bit of precarious footing in the prow of the canoe.

Vainly Challoner yelled at them as he paddled desperately to beat out the danger of the rapids.  Neewa and Miki were too absorbed to hear him.  Miki’s four paws were paddling the air again, but this time his sharp teeth were firmly fixed in the loose hide under Neewa’s neck, and with his paws he continued to kick and bat in a way that promised effectively to pummel the wind out of Neewa had not the thing happened which Challoner feared.  Still in a clinch they rolled off the prow of the canoe into the swirling current of the stream.

For ten seconds or so they utterly disappeared.  Then they bobbed up, a good fifty feet below him, their heads close together as they sped swiftly toward the doom that awaited them, and a choking cry broke from Challoner’s lips.  He was powerless to save them, and in his cry was the anguish of real grief.  For many weeks Miki had been his only chum and comrade.