n the white
welter at their feet lies a breadth of troubled green where the stream
flows heaped up, as it were, in the center.

In places it roared in filmy wreaths about a broken mass of stone that
cumbered the channel, but elsewhere the hollowed sides, upon which the
smallest clawed creature could not have found a foothold, had been worn
down into a smooth slipperiness.

"It is all so horrible," said Grace, bending back her head, so that as I
glanced over my shoulder I could see her firm white neck through the laces
as she stared upward at the streak of blue sky so far above. Then she
turned her face toward me again, and it seemed to my excited fancy that it
had grown ethereal.

"We may pass the whirlpool, and--if not--death can come no harder here
than in any other place," she added.

I tried to answer, and failed miserably, feeling glad that an increasing
tumult covered my silence, for I could not drive out a horrible picture of
that fair face with the gold bronze hair swept in long wet wisps across it
washing out, frozen still forever, into the sunlit valley, or the soft
hands I should have given a life to kiss clutching in a last vain agony at
the cruel stones which mocked them. Then I set my teeth, clenching the
paddle until each muscle swelled as though it would burst the skin, and,
with something that was divided between an incoherent prayer and an
imprecation upon my lips, I determined that if human flesh and blood could
save her she should not perish.

The roar of water grew louder and louder, rolling in reverberations along
the scarped rock's side, until it seemed as if the few dwarf pines which
clung in odd crannies here and there trembled in unison, and once more the
white smoke of a fall or rapid rose up close before us. Then I could see
the smooth lip of the cataract held apart, as it were, by one curved
glittering ripple from the tumult beneath, and I remembered having heard
the Indian packers say that when shooting a low fall one has only to keep
the craft straight before the current, which is not always easy, and let
her go.

"Sit quite still, Grace," I cried. "If the canoe upsets I will at once
take hold of you. We shall know the worst in another few minutes now."

Her lips moved a little, and though I heard no words I fancied it was a
prayer, then I turned my head forward and prepared for the struggle. I had
small skill in handling canoes, but I had more than average strength, and
felt thank