w shooting on safely to the next
test of skill and courage--on, on, till at last there was only one
passage to make before the canoe would plunge into the smooth water
running with great swiftness till it almost reached Carillon.

Suddenly, as she neared the last dangerous point, round which she must
swing between jagged and unseen barriers of rock, her sight became for
an instant dimmed, as though a cloud passed over her eyes. She had never
fainted in her life, but it seemed to her now that she was hovering on
unconsciousness. Commending the will and energy left, she fought the
weakness down. It was as though she forced a way through tossing,
buffeting shadows; as though she was shaking off from her shoulders
shadowy hands which sought to detain her; as though smothering things
kept choking back her breath, and darkness like clouds of wool gathered
about her face. She was fighting for her life, and for years it seemed
to be; though indeed it was only seconds before her will reasserted
itself, and light broke again upon her way. Even on the verge of the
last ambushed passage her senses came back; but they came with a stark
realization of the peril ahead: it looked out of her eyes as a face
shows itself at the window of a burning building.

Memory shook itself free. It pierced the tumult of waters, found the
ambushed rocks, and guided the lithe brown arms and hands, so that the
swift paddle drove the canoe straight onward, as a fish drives itself
through a flume of dragon's teeth beneath the flood. The canoe quivered
for an instant at the last cataract, then responding to Memory and Will,
sped through the hidden chasm, tossed by spray and water, and swept into
the swift current of smooth water below.

Fleda Druse had run the Rapids of Carillon. She could hear the bells
ringing for evening service in the Catholic Church of Carillon, and
bells-soft, booming bells-were ringing in her own brain. Like muffled
silver these brain-bells were, and she was as one who enters into a deep
forest, and hears far away in the boscage the mystic summons of
forest deities. Voices from the banks of the river behind called to
her--hilarious, approving, agitated voices of her Indian friends, and of
Osterhaut and Jowett, those wild spectators of her adventure: but they
were not wholly real. Only those soft, booming bells in her brain were
real.

Shooting the Rapids of Carillon was the bridge by which she passed from
the world she had left