Almost at the same moment Nantaquas laid his dripping paddle beside the implements, and rose partly to his feet, bending over to gather up the bows and arrows. In the act of doing so, and while his body was in a stooping posture, the girl gave a lightning-like, sideways jerk to the boat, snapping it forward like a flash, for a distance of fully two feet. The youth had no thought of anything of the kind, and yet, knowing his sister as well as he did, he _ought_ to have been prepared. Thrown so suddenly off his balance, he went backward over the side of the canoe, which narrowly escaped upsetting; and, as his heels kicked in the air and he vainly threw out his arms to save himself, he dropped out of sight in water twenty feet deep.