Held together by the yard-long rope to which they were fastened, Miki and Neewa swept into the frothing turmoil of the rapids.  For Miki it was the kindness of fate that had inspired his master to fasten him to the same rope with Neewa.  Miki, at three months of age—­weight, fourteen pounds—­was about 80 per cent. bone and only a half of 1 per cent. fat; while Neewa, weight thirteen pounds, was about 90 per cent. fat.  Therefore Miki had the floating capacity of a small anchor, while Neewa was a first-class life-preserver, and almost unsinkable.

In neither of the youngsters was there a yellow streak.  Both were of fighting stock, and, though Miki was under water most of the time during their first hundred-yard dash through the rapids, never for an instant did he give up the struggle to keep his nose in the air.  Sometimes he was on his back and sometimes on his belly; but no matter what his position, he kept his four overgrown paws going like paddles.  To an extent this helped Neewa in the heroic fight he was making to keep from shipping too much water himself.  Had he been alone his ten or eleven pounds of fat would have carried him down-stream like a toy balloon covered with fur, but, with the fourteen-pound drag around his neck, the problem of not going under completely was a serious one.  Half a dozen times he did disappear for an instant when some undertow caught Miki and dragged him down—­head, tail, legs, and all.  But Neewa always rose again, his four fat legs working for dear life.

Then came the waterfall.  By this time Miki had become accustomed to travelling under water, and the full horror of the new cataclysm into which they were plunged was mercifully lost to him.  His paws had almost ceased their motion.  He was still conscious of the roar in his ears, but the affair was less unpleasant than it was at the beginning.  In fact, he was drowning.  To Neewa the pleasant sensations of a painless death were denied.  No cub in the world was wider awake than he when the final catastrophe came.  His head was well above water and he was clearly possessed of all his senses.  Then the river itself dropped out from under him and he shot down in an avalanche of water, feeling no longer the drag of Miki’s weight at his neck.

How deep the pool was at the bottom of the waterfall Challoner might have guessed quite accurately.  Could Neewa have expressed an opinion of his own, he would have sworn that it was a mile.  Miki was past the stage of making estimates, or of caring whether it was two feet or two leagues.  His paws had ceased to operate and he had given himself up entirely to his fate.  But Neewa came up again, and Miki followed, like a bobber.  He was about to gasp his last gasp when the force of the current, as it swung out of the whirlpool, flung Neewa upon a bit of partly submerged driftage, and in a wild and strenuous effort to make himself safe Neewa dragged Miki’s head out of water so that the pup hung at the edge of the driftage like a hangman’s victim at the end of his rope.