FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165  
166   167   168   169   170   >>  
d been broken. He fought still more fiercely after that. And she knew for what he was fighting. Only in an unreal sort of way was he conscious of shock and hurt. It gave him no physical pain. Yet he sensed the growing dizziness in his head, an increasing lack of strength in his arms and body. They were halfway through the Chute when he shot against a rock with terrific force. The contact tore Marette from him. He plunged for her, missed his grip, and then saw her opposite him, clinging to the same rock. The babiche rope had saved her. Fastened about her waist and tied to his wrist, it still held them together--with the five feet of rock between them. Panting, their life half beaten out of them, their eyes met over that rock. Now that he was out of the water, the blood began streaming from Kent's arms and shoulders and face, but he smiled at her as a few moments before she had smiled at him. Her eyes were filled with the pain of his hurts. He nodded back in the direction from which they had come. "We're out of the worst of it," he tried to shout. "As soon as we've got our wind, I will climb over the rock to you. It won't take us longer than a couple of minutes, perhaps less, to make the quiet water at the end of the channel." She heard him and nodded her reply. He wanted to give her confidence. And he had no intention of resting, for her position filled him with a terror which he fought to hide. The babiche rope, not half as large around as his little finger, had swung her to the downstream side of the rock. It was the slender thread of buckskin and his own weight that were holding her. If the buckskin should break-- He thanked God that it was the tough babiche that had been around his pack. An inch at a time he began to draw himself up on the rock. The undertow behind the rock had flung a mass of Marette's long hair toward him, so that it was a foot or two nearer to him than her clinging hands. He worked himself toward that, for he saw that he could reach it more quickly than he could reach her. At the same time he had to keep his end of the babiche taut. It was, from the beginning, an almost superhuman task. The rock was slippery as oil. Twice his eyes shot down-stream, with the thought that it might be better to cast himself bodily into the water, and after that draw Marette to him by means of the babiche. What he saw convinced him that such action would be fatal. He must have Marette in his arms. If he los
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165  
166   167   168   169   170   >>  



Top keywords:
babiche
 

Marette

 

clinging

 
buckskin
 

smiled

 

filled

 

nodded

 

fought

 

weight

 

holding


thanked

 
thread
 

fiercely

 
wanted
 
confidence
 

channel

 

intention

 

resting

 

finger

 

downstream


undertow

 

position

 

terror

 

slender

 

bodily

 
stream
 

thought

 

action

 

convinced

 

slippery


nearer

 

worked

 
beginning
 

superhuman

 

broken

 

quickly

 

minutes

 

sensed

 

growing

 

Panting


beaten
 
physical
 

Fastened

 

plunged

 

halfway

 
missed
 

terrific

 
contact
 
increasing
 

dizziness