As the rock slid away from under his feet his first thought was that the end had come, and that no living creature could live in the roaring maelstrom of rock and, flood into which he was plunging.  But quicker than he dashed through space his mind worked.  Instinctively, without time for reasoning, he gripped at the fact that his one chance lay in the close embrace of his enemy.  He hung to him.  It seemed to him that they turned over and over a hundred times in that distance of fifty feet.  Then a mass of twisting foam broke under him, and up out of it shot the head of one of the roaring monsters of rock that he and Joanne had looked upon.  They struck it fairly, and Aldous was uppermost.  He felt the terrific impact of the other’s body.  The foam boiled upward again, and they slipped off into the flood.

Still Aldous held to his enemy.  He could feel that he was limp now; he no longer felt the touch of the hands that had choked him, or the embrace of the arms that had struggled with him.  He believed that his antagonist was dead.  The fifty-foot fall, with the rock splitting his back, had killed him.  For a moment Aldous still clung to him as they sank together under the surface, torn and twisted by the whirling eddies and whirlpools.  It seemed to him that they would never cease going down, that they were sinking a vast distance.

Dully he felt the beat of rocks.  Then it flashed upon him that the dead man was sinking like a weighted thing.  He freed himself.  Fiercely he struggled to bring himself to the surface.  It seemed an eternity before he rose to the top.  He opened his mouth and drew a great gulp of air into his lungs.  The next instant a great rock reared like a living thing in his face; he plunged against it, was beaten over it, and again he was going down—­down—­in that deadly clutch of maelstrom and undertow.  Again he fought, and again he came to the surface.  He saw a black, slippery wall gliding past him with the speed of an express train.  And now it seemed as though a thousand clubs were beating him.  Ahead of him were rocks—­nothing but rocks.

He shot through them like a piece of driftwood.  The roaring in his ears grew less, and he felt the touch of something under his feet.  Sunlight burst upon him.  He caught at a rock, and hung to it.  His eyes cleared a little.  He was within ten feet of a shore covered with sand and gravel.  The water was smooth and running with a musical ripple.  Waist-deep he waded through it to the shore, and fell down upon his knees, with his face buried in his arms.  He had been ten minutes in the death-grip of the chasm.  It was another ten minutes before he staggered to his feet and looked about him.