ey dragged at their oars when bidden,
each man for his dear life.

But it was all in vain, and they knew it. They felt to a man that all
was over. Even now they could not get their full grip of the water, for
it was becoming foam charged and white with the vesicles of air rushing
to the surface. But they pulled in the true Anglo-Saxon spirit, for
life, of course, but with the desperate intent of pulling to the last,
not to escape, but to die game.

And how soon?

Brace did not once turn his head to the right so as to see--there was no
need to do so, for he was conscious of the ever-nearing presence of a
glassy descending sheet dimly seen through a dense cloud of mist, which
glittered and flashed, and as it rose, rolling over and over like the
smoke from a slow fire, it emitted colours of the most brilliant hues--
glorious refulgent colours, reflections of the sunshine, while with
ever-increasing force there came that dull awful roar.

There was an appeal too now to other senses, for a dull moist watery
odour rose to the lad's nostrils, and at times it suggested fish, and he
shuddered slightly at the thought of how soon he might be beaten down
and swept within the reach of the keen-toothed creatures.

He thought all this and more in those brief seconds, for his brain was
working quickly, independently of his muscles, which never for a moment
flagged in the effort to help the rowers.

How long first?

He knew there would be no fishes close up to the falls, for nothing
could swim in such an air-charged mass of water, and nothing would risk
itself where it would be beaten down and hurled and whirled against the
rocks upon which the waters fell and eddied and played around.

Brace knew and felt that so soon as the boat was sucked a little nearer
there would be a sudden glide right up to the falling water, and then in
an instant they would be beaten down into the darkness right to the
bottom, and then go rushing along at a terrible rate, to begin rising a
little and a little more till they reached the surface half a mile or
more away from where they went down, afterwards to float gently along
past where the brig was anchored--

No; he felt that they would never reach the surface again; for, as soon
as the rush of the water allowed, the great river would be teeming with
shoals of ravenous enemies, and the friends left on board the brig would
never learn the cause of the non-return of the boat's crew.

All this a