t her--even for a few
seconds--the life would be beaten from her body in that rock-strewn
maelstrom below.

And then, suddenly, the babiche cord about his wrist grew loose. The
reaction almost threw him back. With the loosening of it a cry came
from Marette. It all happened in an instant, in almost less time than
his brain could seize upon the significance of it--the slipping of her
hands from the rock, the shooting of her white body away from him in
the still whiter spume of the rapids, The rock had cut the babiche, and
she was gone! With a cry that was like the cry of a madman he plunged
after her. The water engulfed him. He twisted himself up, freeing
himself from the undertow. Twenty feet ahead of him--thirty--he caught
a glimpse of a white arm and then of Marette's face, before she
disappeared in a wall of froth.

Into that froth he shot after her. He came out of it blinded, groping
wildly for her, crying out her name. His fingers caught the end of the
babiche that was fastened about his own wrist, and he clutched it
savagely, believing for a moment that he had found her. Thicker and
more deadly the rocks of the lower passage rose in his way. They seemed
like living things, like devils filled with the desire to torture and
destroy. They struck and beat at him. Their laughter was the roar of a
Niagara. He no longer cried out. His brain grew heavy, and clubs were
beating him--beating and breaking him into a formless thing. The
rock-drifts of spume, lather-white, like the frosting of a monster
cake, turned gray and then black.

He did not know when he ceased fighting. The day went out. Night came.
The world was oblivion. And for a space he ceased to live.

CHAPTER XXIII

An hour later the fighting forces in his body dragged Kent back into
existence. He opened his eyes. The shock of what had happened did not
at once fall upon him. His first sensation was of awakening from a
sleep that had been filled with pain and horror.

Then he saw a black rock wall opposite him; he heard the sullen roar of
the stream; his eyes fell upon a vivid patch of light reflected from
the setting sun. He dragged himself up until he was on his knees, and
all at once a thing that was like an iron hoop--choking his
senses--seemed to break in his head, and he staggered to his feet,
crying out Marette's name. Understanding inundated him with its horror,
deadening his tongue after that first cry, filling his throat with a
moaning, s