o hope--only death.

Marette was squarely facing the thing ahead. In this hour when each
second held a lifetime of suspense Kent saw that she understood. Yet
she did not cry out. Her face was dead white. Her hair and arms and
shoulders were dripping with the splash of water. But she was not
terrified as he had seen terror. When she turned her eyes to him, he
was amazed by the quiet, calm look that was in them. Her lips trembled.

His soul expressed itself in a wordless cry that was drowned in another
crash of timber as a jutting snag of the Tooth crumpled up the little
cabin as if it had been pasteboard. He felt overwhelming him the surge
of a thing mightier than the menace of the Chute. He could not lose! It
was inconceivable. Impossible! With HER to fight for--this slim,
wonderful creature who smiled at him even as she saw death.

And then, as his arm closed still more tightly about her, the monsters
of power and death gave him their answer. The scow swung free of the
Dragon's Tooth, half-filled with water. Its cracked and broken carcass
was caught in the rock jaws of the eastern channel. It ceased to be a
floating thing. It was inundation, dissolution, utter obliteration
almost without shock. And Kent found himself in the thundering rush of
waters, holding to Marette.

For a space they were under. Black water and white froth fumed and
exploded over them. It seemed an age before fresh air filled Kent's
nostrils. He thrust Marette upward and cried out to her. He heard her
answer.

"I'm all right--Jeems!"

His swimming prowess was of little avail now. He was like a chip. All
his effort was to make of himself a barrier between Marette's soft body
and the rocks. It was not the water itself that he feared, but the
rocks.

There were scores and hundreds of them, like the teeth of a mighty
grinding machine. And the jaw was a quarter of a mile in length. He
felt the first shock, the second, the third. He was not thinking of
time or distance, but was fighting solely to keep himself between
Marette and death. The first time he failed, a blind sort of rage
burned in his brain.

He saw her white body strained over a slippery, deluge-worn rock. Her
head was flung back, and he saw the long masses of her hair streaming
out in the white froth, and he thought for an instant that her fragile
body had 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