Then Hell-Camp Reivers felt himself going mad. He hit Tammy so hard and
true that he flew through the air and struck against Moir. The next
instant Reivers was diving like a flash into the black water, groping
for MacGregor, while the current swept him into the total darkness.
He heard the bullet from Moir’s revolver strike the water behind him in
the instant that his hands found MacGregor; heard mocking laughter as he
pulled the old man’s head above water; then the current whirled him and
his burden away. It whisked him downstream with a power irresistible. It
threw him from side to side against the ragged rock walls. It sucked him
and the load he bore down in deep whirlpools and spewed them up again.
He bumped his head against the stone roof of the tunnel and swore. The
roof was a scant foot above the water. He put his hand up. The roof was
getting closer to the water with every yard. Soon there was only room
for their upturned faces above the water.
Reivers laughed heartily. So this was to be the end! The joke was on
him. After all he had gone through, he was to drown like a silly fool
through a fool’s impulse.
Presently roof and water came together. For a moment Reivers fought with
his vast strength, holding his own for an instant against the current,
hanging on to the last few seconds of life with a fury of effort. The
current proved too strong. It sucked them under; the water closed above
them. They were whirled and buffeted to the last breath of life in them,
and then suddenly their heads slipped above water and they were looking
straight up at the gray Winter sky.
CHAPTER XLV—A SURPRISE FOR SHANTY MOIR
Reivers caught hold of a spear of rock the instant his head came out of
water, and held on. He did not try to think or understand at first.
Sufficient to know that he was alive and to pump his lungs full of the
air they were crying for. He held MacGregor under his left arm, and he
rather wondered that he hadn’t let him go in that moment when he went
under. MacGregor was beginning to revive, too. Reivers looked around.
There was not much to see. They were in a tiny opening in the rocks, a
yard or two in length. It was a duplicate of Moir’s cavern on a
miniature scale, except that here the rock walls were not high or
impossible to climb. For this space the brook showed itself once more to
the sun, then vanished again under the cliffs.
“Is it Heaven?” gasped MacGregor, only half conscious.
“Nearer hell,” laughed Reivers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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