“He reached the edge and looked down.  Fifteen feet below him was the reality of the dim vision that had come to him a mile back in the woods:  the woman’s husband swimming round and round like a rat in a pail.

“The river was flowing in and out of the lock at the same rate, so that the level of the water remained constant.  The first thing the man did was to close the lower sluices and then open those in the upper gate to their fullest extent.  The water began to rise.

“‘Can you hold out?’ he cried.

“The drowning man turned to him a face already contorted by the agony of exhaustion, and answered with a feeble ‘No.’

“He looked around for something to throw to the man.  A plank had lain there in the morning, he remembered stumbling over it, and complaining of its having been left there; he cursed himself now for his care.

“A hut used by the navvies to keep their tools in stood about two hundred yards away; perhaps it had been taken there, perhaps there he might even find a rope.

“‘Just one minute, old fellow!’ he shouted down, ‘and I’ll be back.’

“But the other did not hear him.  The feeble struggles ceased.  The face fell back upon the water, the eyes half closed as if with weary indifference.  There was no time for him to do more than kick off his riding boots and jump in and clutch the unconscious figure as it sank.

“Down there, in that walled-in trap, he fought a long fight with Death for the life that stood between him and the woman.  He was not an expert swimmer, his clothes hampered him, he was already blown with his long race, the burden in his arms dragged him down, the water rose slowly enough to make his torture fit for Dante’s hell.

“At first he could not understand why this was so, but in glancing down he saw to his horror that he had not properly closed the lower sluices; in each some eight or ten inches remained open, so that the stream was passing out nearly half as fast as it came in.  It would be another five-and-twenty minutes before the water would be high enough for him to grasp the top.

“He noted where the line of wet had reached to, on the smooth stone wall, then looked again after what he thought must be a lapse of ten minutes, and found it had risen half an inch, if that.  Once or twice he shouted for help, but the effort taxed severely his already failing breath, and his voice only came back to him in a hundred echoes from his prison walls.

“Inch by inch the line of wet crept up, but the spending of his strength went on more swiftly.  It seemed to him as if his inside were being gripped and torn slowly out:  his whole body cried out to him to let it sink and lie in rest at the bottom.

“At length his unconscious burden opened its eyes and stared at him stupidly, then closed them again with a sigh; a minute later opened them once more, and looked long and hard at him.