y followed at all, it was
not easy at that moment to determine; for a bright flash of lightning,
glaring over the river, vanished suddenly, leaving all in double
darkness, and the impetuous rush of the current whirled him he knew not
whither; while the crash of the thunder that followed, prevented his
hearing any other noise, save the increasing and never absent roar of the
waters. Another flash illuminated the scene, and during its short-lived
radiance he perceived himself flying, as it almost seemed, through the
water, borne along by a furious current betwixt what appeared to him two
lofty walls of crag and forest, towards those obstructions in the
channel, which, in times of flood, converted the whole river into a
boiling caldron. They were masses of rock, among which had lodged rafts
of drift timber, forming a dam or barrier on either side of the river,
from which the descending floods were whirled into a central channel,
ample enough in the dry season to discharge the waters in quiet, but
through which they were now driven with all the hurry and rage of a
torrent. The scene, viewed in the momentary glare of the lightning, was
indeed terrific: the dark and rugged walls on either side, the ramparts
of timber of every shape and size, from the little willow sapling to the
full-grown sycamore piled high above the rocks, and the rushing gulf
betwixt them, made up a spectacle sufficient to appal the stoutest heart;
and Roland gasped for breath, as he beheld the little canoe whirl into
the narrow chasm, and then vanish, even before the light was over, as if
swallowed up in its boiling vortex.

But there was little time for fear or conjecture. He cast the rein of the
palfrey from his hand, directed Briareus's head towards the abyss, and
the next moment, sweeping in darkness and with the speed of an arrow,
betwixt the barriers, he felt his charger swimming beneath him in
comparatively tranquil waters. Another flash illumined hill and river,
and he beheld the little canoe dancing along in safety, scarce fifty
yards in advance, with Stackpole waving the tattered fragments of his hat
aloft, and yelling out a note of triumph. But the lusty hurrah was
unheard by the soldier. A more dreadful sound came to his ears from
behind, in a shriek that seemed uttered by the combined voices of men and
horses, and was heard even above the din of the torrent. But it was as
momentary as dreadful, and if a cry of agony, it was of agony that was