and then with a second
effort, he dragged him into the boat.

The man evidently had fainted after his last outcry. His body slipped
off the seat and flopped to the bottom of the boat where it lay with
the white face fully exposed to the glare of the sun. A broad scar,
now doubly sinister in the pallid face, disfigured the brow.

Lane recoiled from the well-remembered features of Richard Swann.

"God Almighty!" he cried. And his caustic laughter rolled out over the
whirling waters. The boat, now disengaged from the driftwood, floated
swiftly down the river.

Lane stared in bewilderment at Swann's pale features. His amazement at
being brought so strangely face to face with this man made him deaf
to the increasing roar of the waters and blind to the greater momentum
of the boat.

A heavy thump, a grating sound and splintering of wood, followed by a
lurch of the boat and a splashing of cold water in his face brought
Lane back to a realization of the situation.

He looked up from the white face of the unconscious man. The boat had
turned round. He saw a huge stone that poked its ugly nose above the
water. He turned his face down stream. A sea of irregular waves,
twisting currents, dark, dangerous rocks and patches of swirling foam
met his gaze.

When Lane stood up, with a boatman's instinct, to see the water far
ahead, the spectacle thrilled him. A yellow flood, in changeful yet
consistent action, rolled and whirled down the wide incline between
the stony banks, and lost itself a mile below in a smoky veil of mist.
Visions of past scenes whipped in and out his mind, and he saw an
ocean careening and frothing under a golden moon; a tide sweeping
down, curdled with sand, a grim stream of silt, rushing on with the
sullen sweep of doom and the wildfire of the prairie, leaping,
cavorting, reaching out, turning and shooting, irresistibly borne
under the lash of the wind. He saw in the current a live thing freeing
itself in terror.

A roar, like the blending of a thousand storms among the pines, filled
his ears and muffled his sense of hearing and appalled him. He sat
down with his cheeks blanching, his skin tightening, his heart
sinking, for in that roar he heard death. Escape was impossible. The
end he had always expected was now at hand. But he was not to meet it
alone. The man who had ruined his sister and so many others must go to
render his accounting, and in this justice of fate Lane felt a
wretched gratification.