doing nobly.
Look out for this big beggar just ahead!"

So it went on, from bad to worse and then to bad again, but never with a
chance for a landing or a moment's rest from the engrossing vigilance.
Prime gasped and was thankful that there were days of sharp
muscle-hardening behind them to fit them for this crowning test. He was
sure he could measure Lucetta's fortitude by his own. So long as he
could endure the strain he knew he could count upon hearing the steady
dip of her paddle keeping time with his own.

But the worst of the worst was yet to come. At the foot of a series of
rapids which were like a steeply descending stair, they found themselves
in a sluiceway where the enlarged river ran like a torrent in flood. On
the still air of the summer day a hoarse clamor was rising to warn them
that there was a cataract ahead. Prime's cry of alarm was not needed.
With the first backing dip of the paddle he felt the braking impulse at
the stern striking in with his own.

"Hold her!" he shouted. "We've got to make the shore, if it smashes us!"
But the puny strength of the two pairs of arms was as nothing when
pitted against the onsweep of the mighty flood. For a brief instant the
downward rush of the canoe was checked; then it was caught in a whirling
eddy and spun end for end as if upon a pivot. When it straightened up
for the leap over the shallow fall it was headed the wrong way, and a
moment later the crash came.

The young woman was the only one of the two who knew definitely what
followed. In the tipping glide over the brink they were both thrown out
of the canoe and spilled into the whirlpool at the foot of the cataract.
Lucetta kept her head sufficiently to remember that Prime could not
swim, and when she came up from the plunge she saw him, and saw that he
was not struggling.

[Illustration: "Hold her!" he shouted. "We've got to make the shore, if
it smashes us!"]

Two quick strokes enabled her to get her fingers in his hair, and then
began a battle in which the strength of the single free arm had to match
itself against the swirling current of the whirlpool. Twice, and yet
once again, the young woman and her helpless burden were swept around
the circle, each time drawing a little nearer to the recurving eddy
under the fall. Lucetta knew well enough that a second ingulfing under
the cataract meant death for both, and at the beginning of the fourth
circling she made the supreme effort, winning the desperate