Vosper gazed in fascinated terror. Buster
wheeled, struggling to keep his feet. Mulvaney pushed on, clear to the
deepest, wildest portion of the stream. And then Virginia's horse
pitched forward into the wild waters.

Perhaps the animal had simply made a misstep, possibly an irregularity
in the river bottom had upset his balance. The waters seemed to pounce
with merciless fury, and struck with all their power.

In the half-light it was impossible even for Bill to follow the
lightning events of the next second. He saw the horse struggle,
flounder, then roll on his back from the force of the current. It swept
him down as the wind sweeps a straw. And he saw Virginia shake loose
from the saddle.

He had but an instant's glimpse of a white face in the gray water, of
hair that streamed; an instant's realization of a faint cry that the
waters obscured. And then he sprang to her aid.

He could do nothing else. When the soul of the man was made it was
given a certain strength, and certain basic laws were laid down by which
his life was to be governed. That strength sustained him now, those
laws held him in bondage. He could be false to neither.

He knew the terror of that gray whirlpool below. He had every reason to
believe that by no possible effort of his could he save the girl; he
would only throw away his own life too. The waters were icy cold:
swiftly would they draw the life-giving heat from their bodies. Soaked
through, the cold of the night and the forest would be swift to claim
them if by any miracle they were able to struggle out of the river. Yet
there was not an instant's delay. The full sweep of his thoughts was
like a flash of lightning in the sky; he was out of the saddle almost
the instant that the waters engulfed her. He sprang with his full
strength into the stream.

On the bank the two men saw it as in a dream: the horse's fall, the
upheaval of the water as the animal struggled, a flash of the girl's
face, and then Bill's leap. They called out in their impotence, and
they gazed with horror-widened eyes. But almost at once the drama was
hidden from them. The twilight dropped its gray curtains between;
besides, the waters had swept their struggling figures down the stream
and out of their sight.

Already the river looked just the same. Mulvaney, riderless, was
battling toward them through the torrent, but the stress and struggle of
the second before had been instantly cut short. Th