he foam and
water, and then Macgregor saw him floating down on the current below
the rapid. He was on his back, with his face just above water, and he
did not move a limb.

Mac yelled at him, but got no answer. Fred had not been under long
enough to be drowned. He had evidently been stunned by striking his
head against a rock.

Then Mac realized the boy's new and greater danger. Fred was drifting
rapidly head first toward the second cataract, and no one could dive
over that fall and live. The rocks at the bottom would brain the
strongest swimmer.

Mac instinctively dropped his rod and rushed into the water. The
strength of the swirling current almost swept him off his feet. It was
too deep to wade, and he was not a good swimmer. He could never reach
Fred in time. They would go over the fall together.

Fred was more than thirty feet from shore. Mac thought of a long pole,
and splashed madly ashore again. He caught sight of his fishing-rod,
with its hundred yards of strong silk line on the reel.

Fred was now about twenty yards above the cascade when Mac ran into the
river again, rod in hand, as far as he dared to wade. He measured the
distance with his eye, reeled out the line, waving the rod in the air,
and then, with a turn of his wrist, the delicate rod shot the pair of
flies across the water.

Mac was an expert fly-caster. The difficulty was not in the length of
the cast; it was to hook the flies in Fred's clothing. They fell a
yard beyond the boy's body. Mac drew them in. The hooks seemed to
catch for an instant on his chest, but came free at the first tug.

Desperately Mac swished the flies out of the water for another cast.
He saw that he would have time to throw but this once more, for Fred
was terribly near the cataract, and moving faster as the pull of the
current quickened. Mac waded a little farther into the stream, leaning
against the current to keep his balance.

The line whirled again, and shot out, and again the gut fell across
Fred's shoulders with the flies on the other side. With the greatest
care Mac drew in the line. The first fly dragged over the body as
before. The other caught, broke loose, and caught again in Fred's coat
near the collar, and then the steel rod bent with the sudden strain of
a hundred and fifty pounds drawn down by the strong current.

Mac knew that the rod was almost unbreakable, but he feared for his
line. The current pulled so hard that he dared