Meanwhile, short though the time had been, the log with its human freight had disappeared beyond the open space in the willows.

Although Lane pulled a powerful stroke, when he got out of the slack water into the current, so swift was it that the boat sheered abruptly and went down stream with a sweep.  Marking the piece of driftwood and aided by the swiftly running stream Lane soon overhauled it.

The log which the man appeared to be clutching was a square piece of timber, probably a beam of a bridge, for it was long and full of spikes.  When near enough Lane saw that the fellow was not holding on but was helpless and fast on the spikes.  His head and arms were above water.

Lane steered the boat alongside and shouted to the man.  As he made no outcry or movement, Lane, after shipping the oars, reached over and grasped his collar.  Steadying himself, so as not to overturn the boat, Lane pulled him half-way over the gunwale, and then with a second effort, he dragged him into the boat.

The man evidently had fainted after his last outcry.  His body slipped off the seat and flopped to the bottom of the boat where it lay with the white face fully exposed to the glare of the sun.  A broad scar, now doubly sinister in the pallid face, disfigured the brow.

Lane recoiled from the well-remembered features of Richard Swann.

“God Almighty!” he cried.  And his caustic laughter rolled out over the whirling waters.  The boat, now disengaged from the driftwood, floated swiftly down the river.

Lane stared in bewilderment at Swann’s pale features.  His amazement at being brought so strangely face to face with this man made him deaf to the increasing roar of the waters and blind to the greater momentum of the boat.

A heavy thump, a grating sound and splintering of wood, followed by a lurch of the boat and a splashing of cold water in his face brought Lane back to a realization of the situation.

He looked up from the white face of the unconscious man.  The boat had turned round.  He saw a huge stone that poked its ugly nose above the water.  He turned his face down stream.  A sea of irregular waves, twisting currents, dark, dangerous rocks and patches of swirling foam met his gaze.

When Lane stood up, with a boatman’s instinct, to see the water far ahead, the spectacle thrilled him.  A yellow flood, in changeful yet consistent action, rolled and whirled down the wide incline between the stony banks, and lost itself a mile below in a smoky veil of mist.  Visions of past scenes whipped in and out his mind, and he saw an ocean careening and frothing under a golden moon; a tide sweeping down, curdled with sand, a grim stream of silt, rushing on with the sullen sweep of doom and the wildfire of the prairie, leaping, cavorting, reaching out, turning and shooting, irresistibly borne under the lash of the wind.  He saw in the current a live thing freeing itself in terror.