Dreadful, therefore, as was the spectacle of the youth dashed down the abyss under her eyes, and almost in reach of her arm, she did not pause, like Harriet, to scream after the Captain, who was undoubtedly drawing nigh, and at an unusual pace; but leaving this to be done by her companion, she ran down the rocks that led to the base of the fall, and the next moment Harriet beheld her rush boldly into the water. The instant she reached the basin at the foot of the cascade, which was broken by rocks, black and slippery from the eternal spray, she caught sight of the body--for such it seemed--rolling in the flood where it boiled over a ridgy mole in a sheet of foam. It was scarce two paces from the bank, and though the torrent gushed over the rock with great impetuosity, it was shallow, at least in the nearer portion; and, unless too rash and daring, there was little danger she could be herself swept over the ledge among the deep and dangerous eddies below. She stepped therefore upon the rock as far as she durst, and stretching out her hand, succeeded in grasping the insensible figure, as it was whirling over at a deeper place and in a fiercer current. All her strength, however, availed nothing further than to arrest the body where it was; and she must have speedily released her hold, or been swept with it herself from the ledge, when a new auxiliary, attracted by the same cries that had alarmed Captain Loring, came unexpectedly to her assistance, crackling through the bushes, and bounding over the rocks on the opposite side of the pool, which was a wilderness of rock and swamp. No sooner had this personage beheld her situation, than he ran a little lower down, where the stream was again contracted, sprang across from rock to rock, and immediately darted to her side. With one hand he dragged--or, to speak more strictly, he flung her, (for his actions were none of the gentlest,)--out of the water; and with the other, he lifted the unlucky painter from the torrent, and bore him to the bank, saying, as he laid him at the maiden's feet, in a voice none of the mildest in the world, "Why, here's fine sport for a May-day, and a rough end to a fool's frolic! How many more of you must I fish up?"