“You’ve still got time to turn back,” the girl answered him, seemingly without feeling.  “Glide into shore, and we’ll try to catch an overhanging limb.  It’s my last warning.”

It was true that a few seconds remained in which they might, with heroic effort, save themselves.  But these were passing:  already they could see the gleaming whitecaps of the cataract below.

The roar of the wild waters was in their ears.  Ahead they could see great rocks, emerging like fangs above the water, sharp-edged and wet with spray.  The boat was shuddering; the water seemed to covet them, and a great force, like the hand of a river god, reached at them from beneath as if to crush them in a merciless grasp.  A hundred yards farther the smooth, swift water fell into a seething, roaring cataract—­such a manifestation of the mighty powers of nature as checks the breath and awes the heart—­a death stream in which seemingly the canoe would be shattered to pieces in an instant.

Ben shook his head.  The girl’s white hand flashed to her side, then rose sure and steady, holding her pistol.  “Turn quick, or I’ll fire,” she said.

He felt that, if such action were in her power, she told the truth.  No mercy dwelt in her clear gaze.  His eye fell to the box of cartridges, now fallen safely among the duffle.  Presently he smiled into her eyes.

“Your gun is empty, Beatrice,” he told her quietly.  He heard her sob, and he smiled a little, reassuringly.  “Never mind—­and pray for a good voyage,” he advised.  “We’re going through.”

XXI

The craft and its occupants were out of sight by the time Jeffery Neilson reached the river bank with his rifle.  The flush had swept from his bronze skin, leaving it a ghastly yellow, and for once in his life no oaths came to his lips.  He could only mutter, strangely, from a convulsed throat.

Like an insane man he hastened down the river bank, fighting his way through the brush.  The thickets were dense, ordinarily impenetrable to any mortal strength except to that mighty, incalculable power of the moose and grizzly; yet they could not restrain him now.  The tough clothes he wore were nearly torn from his body; his face and hands were scratched as if by the claws of a lynx; but he did not pause till he reached the bank of the gray river.

Only one more glimpse of the canoe was vouchsafed him, and that glimpse came too late.  He saw the light barge just as it hovered at the crest of the rapids.  Even if he could have shot straight at so great a range and had killed the man in the stern, no miracle could have saved his daughter.  She would have been instantly swept to her death against the crags.

Some measure of self-control returned to him then, and he made his way fast as he could toward the claim.  Sensing the older man’s distress, Ray straightened from his work at the sight of him.