A roar, like the blending of a thousand storms among the pines, filled his ears and muffled his sense of hearing and appalled him.  He sat down with his cheeks blanching, his skin tightening, his heart sinking, for in that roar he heard death.  Escape was impossible.  The end he had always expected was now at hand.  But he was not to meet it alone.  The man who had ruined his sister and so many others must go to render his accounting, and in this justice of fate Lane felt a wretched gratification.

The boat glanced with a hard grind on a rock and shot down a long yellow incline; a great curling wave whirled back on Lane; a heavy shock sent him flying from his seat; a gurgling demoniacal roar deafened his ears and a cold eager flood engulfed him.  He was drawn under, as the whirlpool sucks a feather; he was tossed up, as the wind throws a straw.  The boat bobbed upright near him.  He grasped the gunwale and held on.

It bounced on the buffeting waves and rode the long swells like a cork; it careened on the brink of falls and glided over them; it thumped on hidden stones and floating logs; it sped by black-nosed rocks; it drifted through fogs of yellow mist; it ran on piles of driftwood; it trembled with the shock of beating waves and twisted with the swirling current.

Still Lane held on with a vise-like clutch.

Suddenly he seemed to feel some mighty propelling force under him; he rose high with the stern of the boat.  Then the bow pitched down into a yawning hole.  A long instant he and the boat slid down a glancing fall—­then thunderous roar—­furious contending wrestle—­cold, yellow, flying spray—­icy, immersing, enveloping blackness!

A giant tore his hands from the boat.  He whirled round and round as he sank.  A languid softness stole over him.  He saw the smile of his mother, the schoolmate of his boyhood, the old attic where he played on rainy days, and the spotted cows in the pasture and the running brook.  He saw himself a tall young man, favorite of all, winning his way in life that was bright.

Then terrible blows of his heart hammered at his ribs, throbs of mighty pain burst his brain; great constrictions of his throat choked him.  He began fighting the encompassing waters with frenzied strength.  Up and up he fought his way to see at last the light, to gasp at the air.  But the flood sucked at him, a weight pulled at his feet.  As he went down again something hard struck him.  With the last instinctive desperate love of life in his action he flung out his hand and grasped the saving thing.  It was the boat.  He hooked his elbow over the gunwale.  Then darkness filmed over his eyes and he seemed to feel himself whirling round and round, round and round.  A long time, seemingly, he whirled, while the darkness before his eyes gave way to smoky light, his dead ears awoke to confused blur of sound.  But the weight on his numb legs did not lessen.

All at once the boat grated on a rock, and his knees struck.  He lay there holding on while life and sense seemed to return.  Something black and awful retreated.  Then the rush and roar of the rapids was again about him.  He saw that he had drifted into a back eddy behind the ledge of rock, and had whirled slowly round and round with a miscellaneous collection of driftwood.