mass of it. It
blotted out everything around them. The roar of it cut off sound, as the
mass of it cut off sight. Fortunately the boat was now going evenly as
in an oiled groove. By feeling, Io knew that her guide was moving from
his seat, and guessed that he was bailing. The spare poncho, put in by
Miss Van Arsdale, protected her. She was jubilant with the thresh of the
rain in her face, the sweet, smooth motion of the boat beneath her, the
wild abandon of the night, which, entering into her blood, had
transmuted it into soft fire.

How long she crouched, exultant and exalted, under the beat of the
storm, she could not guess. She half emerged from her possession with a
strange feeling that the little craft was being irresistibly drawn
forward and downward in what was now a suction rather than a current. At
the same time she felt the spring and thrust of Banneker's muscles,
straining at the oars. She dipped a hand into the water. It ridged high
around her wrists with a startling pressure. What was happening?

Through the uproar she could dimly hear Ban's voice. He seemed to be
swearing insanely. Dropping to her hands and knees, for the craft was
now swerving and rocking, she crept to him.

"The dam! The dam! The dam!" he shouted. "I'd forgotten about it. Go
back. Turn on the flash. Look for shore."

Against rather than into that impenetrable enmeshment of rain, the glow
dispersed itself ineffectually. Io sat, not frightened so much as
wondering. Her body ached in sympathy with the panting, racking toil of
the man at the oars, the labor of an indomitable pigmy, striving to
thwart a giant's will. Suddenly he shouted. The boat spun. Something low
and a shade blacker than the dull murk about them, with a white,
whispering ripple at its edge, loomed. The boat's prow drove into soft
mud as Banneker, all but knocking her overboard in his dash, plunged to
the land and with one powerful lift, brought boat and cargo to safety.

For a moment he leaned, gasping, against a stump. When he spoke, it was
to reproach himself bitterly.

"We must have come through the town. There's a dam below it. I'd
forgotten it. My God! If we hadn't had the luck to strike shore."

"Is it a high dam?" she asked.

"In this flood we'd be pounded to death the moment we were over. Listen!
You can hear it."

The rain had diminished a little. Above its insistence sounded a deeper,
more formidable beat and thrill.

"We must be quite close to it,"