He was in no alarm as yet.  The line, although of rawhide, was switching on the surface of the rapid current; it seemed easy enough to recover it and make a new fastening.  Passing from the stern to the bow, he knelt down and dipped one hand in the water, ready to clutch the end of the lariat.

But a boat five feet long and twelve feet broad, especially when made of canvas on a frame of light sticks, is not handily paddled against swift water; and the Buchanan (as the voyagers afterward named it) not only sagged awkwardly, but showed a strong tendency to whirl around like an egg-shell as it was.  Moreover, the loose line almost instantly took the direction of the stream, and swept so rapidly shoreward that by the time Thurstane was in position to seize it, it was rods away.

“Row for the bank,” he ordered.  But just as he spoke there came a little noise which was to these three men the crack of doom.  The paddle of that most unskilful navigator, Sweeny, snapped in two, and the broad blade of it was instantly out of reach.  Next the cockle-shell of a boat was spinning on its keel-less bottom, and whirling broadside on, bow foremost, stern foremost, any way, down the San Juan.

“Paddle away!” shouted Thurstane to Glover.  “Drive her in shore!  Pitch her in!”

The old coaster sent a quick, anxious look down the river, and saw at once that there was no chance of reaching the bank.  Below them, not three hundred yards distant, was an archipelago of rocks, the debris of fallen precipices and pinnacles, through which, for half a mile or more, the water flew in whirlpools and foam.  They were drifting at great speed toward this frightful rapid, and, if they entered it, destruction was sure and instant.  Only the middle of the stream showed a smooth current; and there was less than half a minute in which to reach it.  Without a word Glover commenced paddling as well as he could away from the bank.

“What are you about?” yelled Thurstane, who saw Clara on the roof of the Casa Grande, and was crazed at the thought of leaving her there.  She would suspect that he had abandoned her; she would be massacred by the Apaches; she would starve in the desert, etc.

Glover made no reply.  His whole being was engaged in the struggle of evading immediate death.

One more glance, one moment of manly, soldierly reflection, enabled Thurstane to comprehend the fate which was upon him, and to bow to it with resignation.  Turning his back upon the foaming reefs which might the next instant be his executioners, he stood up in the boat, took off his cap, and waved a farewell to Clara.  He was so unconscious of anything but her and his parting from her that for some time he did not notice that the slight craft had narrowly shaved the rocks, that it had barely crawled into the middle current, and that he was temporarily safe.  He kept his eyes fixed upon the Casa and upon the girl’s motionless figure until a monstrous, sullen precipice slid in between.  He was like one who breathes his last with straining gaze settled on some loved face, parting from which is worse than death.  When he could see her no longer, nor the ruin which sheltered her, and which suddenly seemed to him a paradise, he dropped his head between his hands, utterly unmanned.