to shore alive
if it did. There were stories, it is true, that the Indians used to
shoot the fall in their canoes with safety; but everybody knew that at
least three persons had been lost by going over it since the town was
settled; and more than one dead body had been found floating far down
the river, with bruises and fractured bones, as if it had taken the same
fatal plunge.

There was no time to lose. Clement ran a little way up the river-bank,
flung off his shoes, and sprang from the bank as far as he could leap
into the water. The current swept him toward the fall, but he worked
nearer and nearer the middle of the stream. He was making for the rock,
thinking he could plant his feet upon it and at the worst hold the boat
until he could summon other help by shouting. He had barely got his feet
upon the rock, when the twigs by which the boy was holding gave way. He
seized the boat, but it dragged him from his uncertain footing, and
with a desperate effort he clambered over its side and found himself its
second doomed passenger.

There was but an instant for thought.

"Sit still," he said, "and, just as we go over, put your arms round me
under mine, and don't let go for your life!"

He caught up the single oar, and with a few sharp paddle-strokes brought
the skiff into the blackest centre of the current, where it was deepest,
and would plunge them into the deepest pool.

"Hold your breath! God save us! Now!"

They rose, as if with one will, and stood for an instant, the arms of
the younger closely embracing the other as he had directed.

A sliding away from beneath them of the floor on which they stood, as
the drop fails under the feet of a felon. A great rush of air, and a
mighty, awful, stunning roar,--an involuntary gasp, a choking flood of
water that came bellowing after them, and hammered them down into
the black depths so far that the young man, though used to diving and
swimming long distances underwater, had well-nigh yielded to the fearful
need of air, and sucked in his death in so doing.

The boat came up to the surface, broken in twain, splintered, a load
of firewood for those who raked the river lower down. It had turned
crosswise, and struck the rocks. A cap rose to the surface, such a
one as boys wear,--the same that boy had on. And then--after how many
seconds by the watch cannot be known, but after a time long enough,
as the young man remembered it, to live his whole life over in
memory--Cle