He looked up.  There was Elaine, swept down toward him.  Below he knew the stream tumbled over a tall cataract into the gorge below.

What could he do?

A sudden crackling of the twigs caused him to turn and catch sight of me, just coming up.

For, as best I could on horseback, I had followed Elaine’s car until at last I saw that it had been abandoned.  Thoroughly alarmed, I rode on, past a deserted house until suddenly I heard a shot and a scream.  It seemed to come from below me and I leaped off my horse, making for it as fast as I could, racing toward a stream whose roar I could hear.

There on the bank I came upon a queer old codger, looking about wildly.  Was he the automobile thief?  I ran forward, ready to seize him.  But as I did so, he whirled about and with a strength remarkable in one so old seized my own wrist before I could get his.

“Look!” he cried simply, pointing up the stream.

I did.  A girl in a canoe was coming down toward the falls, screaming, her paddle broken and useless.  My heart leaped into my mouth.  It was Elaine!

“Come,” he panted eagerly to me.  “I can save her.  You must do just as I say.”

He pointed to an overhanging rock near-by and we ran to it.

By this time Elaine was almost upon us, each second getting nearer the veritable maelstrom above the falls.

From the rock overhung also a tree at the very edge of the water.

There was nothing to do but obey him.  Above, though we did not see them, Del Mar and his man were gloating over the result of their work.  But they were gloating too soon.  We came to the rock and the tree.

“Here,” cried the new-found friend, “I’ll get hold of the tree and then hold you.”

Instantly he threw himself on his stomach, hooking his leg about the tree trunk.  I crawled out over the ledge of slippery rock to the very edge and looked over.  It was the only chance.

The old naturalist seized my legs in his hands.  I slid down the rock, letting myself go.

Literally, his presence of mind had invented what was really a life chain, a human rope.

On came the canoe, Elaine in it as white as death, crying out and trying to stop or guide it as, nearer and nearer through the smooth-worn walls of the chasm, it whirled to the falls.

With a grip of steel, the naturalist held to the tree which swayed and bent, while also he held me, as if in a vise, head down.

On came Elaine—­directly at us.

She stood up and balanced herself, a dangerous feat in a canoe at any time, but doubly so in those dark, swirling, treacherous waters.

“Steady!” I encouraged.  “Grab my arms!”

As the canoe reached us, she gave a little jump and seized my forearms.  Her hands slipped, but I grasped her own arms, and we held each other.

The momentum of her body was great.  For an instant I thought we were all going over.  But the naturalist held his grip and slowly began to pull himself and us up the slippery rock.