Somehow from the configuration of the country this high ground affected the course of the wind, or else it had suddenly dropped, for to the horror of the rowers the sail, which had fairly bellied out, began to collapse, and a minute later hung flapping against the mast, doing nothing to help the progress of the boat out of the peril in which she lay. "Pull!" roared the mate. "Pull for your lives, my lads!" He sprang forward, and, just retaining his hold upon the tiller with one hand, he planted his foot against the bow man's oar and kept giving a thrust in time with each stroke. Brace's first idea was that they ought to tack at once, but he grasped the fact directly after that there was not time, for in the attempt to achieve the manoeuvre the boat would lose so much way that they would be swept irredeemably closer towards the falls; and he went on thrusting with all his might, knowing full well that the mate was right, and that their only chance was to row on parallel with the falls till they could reach the farther shore. "Pull for your lives!" were the last words the mate shouted, and they were but faintly heard in the heavy roar, and the men pulled as they had never pulled before. They pulled till the rough ashen oars bent and threatened to snap in two, and as Brace kept on with his regular swing and thrust his position was rendered more horrible by his being face to face with the men and forced to see their starting eyes, their strained faces, and the glint of their white set teeth, as they dragged at their oars when bidden, each man for his dear life. But it was all in vain, and they knew it. They felt to a man that all was over. Even now they could not get their full grip of the water, for it was becoming foam charged and white with the vesicles of air rushing to the surface. But they pulled in the true Anglo-Saxon spirit, for life, of course, but with the desperate intent of pulling to the last, not to escape, but to die game. And how soon? Brace did not once turn his head to the right so as to see--there was no need to do so, for he was conscious of the ever-nearing presence of a glassy descending sheet dimly seen through a dense cloud of mist, which glittered and flashed, and as it rose, rolling over and over like the smoke from a slow fire, it emitted colours of the most brilliant hues-- glorious refulgent colours, reflections of the sunshine, while with ever-increasing force there came that dull awful roar. There was an appeal too now to other senses, for a dull moist watery odour rose to the lad's nostrils, and at times it suggested fish, and he shuddered slightly at the thought of how soon he might be beaten down and swept within the reach of the keen-toothed creatures. He thought all this and more in those brief seconds, for his brain was working quickly, independently of his muscles, which never for a moment flagged in the effort to help the rowers. How long first?