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"He'll be all right in a few minutes," said Ben Stubbs as M. Desplaines and the others all tried to explain at once to Frank how Sikaso had guessed what had happened when the boys did not return. The Krooman had led the party by secret native trails to the cliff top. Frank clasped the huge black's hand with real gratitude and tears of thankfulness brimmed in his eyes.
At first, consternation seized on the boys who thought that an accident had happened, but seeing not hearing Professor Wiseman's reassuring laugh and noticing him plunge after M. Desplaines, the boys rightly concluded that the aperture was a subterranean entrance to the foot of the falls. And so it proved. A steep flight of steps was cut in a deep cleft of the cliff down to the water's edge.
What answered to their club house was a corner lot on Harrison and Desplaines Streets, strewn with old boilers, in which they slept by night and many times by day. The gang was brought to the attention of Hull-House during the summer of 1904 by a distracted mother, who suspected that they were all addicted to some drug.
"Well I should say so," cried Frank joyously, and he slipped the man a bill of large denomination. "I'll buy everybody a drink," shouted Davis, shuffling off. "Come on, boys, we've no time to lose!" Frank exclaimed the next minute and they hastened round to the house of M. Desplaines' friend. This time that worthy was at home and greeted them warmly.
Their lines and other equipment they had in their pockets. As they shoved out M. Desplaines shouted something that they did not catch and pointed down the stream. How near the fact that they could not hear his words was to come to costing them their lives neither of the boys guessed. "Say, Frank, have you noticed that we are going to have a hard paddle back against this current?"
M. Desplaines, who was in the launch, explained that they had formed part of the crew of a steamer that had been wrecked down the coast some weeks previously. They had been waiting for a ship and were willing to work their passage home: to New York. Among them was their captain, a good seaman and a former yacht skipper.
"What makes you go certain this man is a Chicago detective?" asked Will. "I haven't seen anything that looks like Chicago about him!" "Why," answered Tommy, "he's mentioned Harrison street and Desplaines street and Chicago avenue half a dozen times when talking about the police department of Denver!
A few minutes after they had begun the descent, the little party stood on the brink of the whirling pool into which the mighty falls roared their thousands of tons of water. Following M. Desplaines, they advanced down the stream to a point where a bend shut off like a rock curtain the deafening uproar of the cascade. Here a canoe lay moored and Frank and Harry stepped into it and shoved off.
So level is a portion of the land on the summit, and so slight the elevation above the lake, that in wet seasons the surface-water seems almost as willing to go one way as the other; and on one occasion the upper streams of the Desplaines River were nearly permanently diverted toward the lake by a tornado that gathered up the water and scored the surface in its track toward the east.
The maps, Figs. 1 and 2, give an idea of the most favored scheme that of Mr. Cooley. As will be seen, the canal commencing near the mouth of the Chicago River passes through a cut in the low ridge forming the summit level; then it runs to Lake Joliet, and through the valleys of the Desplaines and Illinois Rivers, to the Mississippi at Grafton, a distance of 325 miles.
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