n dwelling houses and they waited, nerve-stretched, for
the crash that would launch them into the same precarious channel.
Their out-going would be as violent and eruptive as that of lava from a
crater.

Then the dam broke.

It gave way with a rending such as must have been sounded in the days
when a molten globe was cooling. From the base of the dam sucking
tongues had licked out boulders that upheld the formation as a keystone
holds an arch. It went into collapse with an explosive splintering and
left fang-like reefs still standing. Through the breach fell the
ponderous weight of a river left unsupported.

First, the inrush flung the rafts backwards against the banks, and then
the churning whirlpool which was developed sent them spinning madly
outward. The rafts jammed together and trembled with a groaning
shudder. They wavered and undulated like cloth and that nearest the
gorge lunged outward, dashed against one wall of precipice, caromed off
and ground against the other. About the edges, it had gone to
splinters but the core still held. The second raft, by some miracle,
rode through without collision to ride tilting about the curve into the
channel proper. Brent saw, through dazed and uncertain eyes, figures
bending to long poles. He felt such a sickening sensation as a man in
a barrel may experience at the moment of going over the crest of
Niagra. Through it all he felt rather than saw the figure of a girl in
man's clothing standing at the center of the raft, poised with bent
knees against shock; and with a Valkyrie fire in her eyes.

A half hour later the man from town drew a freer breath. It was still
a wild enough ride, but after the lurching dash out of the cauldron, it
seemed a peaceful voyage. Now down the center of the river they swept
at tide-speed. At either end of each raft men bent to the sweeps in
the task of their crude piloting. Tree tops brushed under them as they
went and far out on either side were wide-reaching lagoons that had
been high ground three days ago.

Alexander herself was standing a little apart and Brent was of a mind
to draw her into conversation but as he approached her he decided that
this was not the time to improve acquaintanceship. Her air of
detachment amounted to aloofness and Brent remembered that she had,
weighing upon her, the anxiety of her father's condition.

Jase Mallows, however, just then relieved from duty at the steering
sweep, was less subtle o