mself. The struggle revealed to
him that he was bound fast upon the log. At this his wits cleared up,
with a pang that was more near despair than anything he had ever
known. Then his nerve steadied itself back into its wonted control.

He realized what had befallen him. His enemies had back-trailed him
and caught him off his guard. He was just where, in his awful dream,
he had imagined himself as being. He was bound to one of the logs down
in the great stone pot of Blackwater Eddy.

For a second or two the blood in his veins ran ice, as he braced
himself to feel the log lurch out into the sluice and plunge into the
trampling of the abyss. Then he observed that the other logs were
overtaking and passing him. His log, indeed, was not moving at all.
Evidently, then, it was being held by some one. He tried to look
around, but found himself so fettered that he could only lift his face
a few inches from the log. This enabled him to see the whole surface
of the eddy and the fateful cleft, and out across the raving torrents
into the white curtain that swayed above the cauldron. But he could
not, with the utmost twisting and stretching of his neck, see more
than a couple of feet up the smooth stone sides of the pot.

As he strained on his bonds he heard a harsh chuckle behind him; and
the log, suddenly loosed with a jerk which showed him it had been
held by a pike-pole, began to move. A moment later the sharp,
steel-armed end of the pike-pole came down smartly on the forward end
of the log, within a dozen inches of Henderson's head, biting a secure
hold. The log again came to a stop. Slowly, under pressure from the
other end of the pike-pole, it rolled outward, submerging Henderson's
right shoulder, and turning his face till he could see all the way up
the sides of the pot.

What he saw, on a ledge about three feet above the water, was Red
Pichot, holding the pike-pole and smiling down upon him smoothly. On
the rim above squatted Bug Mitchell, scowling, and gripping his knife
as if he thirsted to settle up all scores on the instant. Imagination
was lacking in Mitchell's make-up; and he was impatient--so far as he
dared to be--of Pichot's fantastic procrastinatings.

When Henderson's eyes met the evil, smiling glance of his enemy they
were steady and cold as steel. To Henderson, who had always, in every
situation, felt himself master, there remained now no mastery but that
of his own will, his own spirit. In his estimation t