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. There was no spreading ripples, no break in the gray surface of the stream to show where the two had fallen. The stream swept on, infinite, passionless for all its tumult, unconquerable,--like the River of Death that takes within its depths the souls of men, never to yield them, never to show whence they have gone. The storm recommenced, the wind wailed in the spruce tops, and the snow sifted down into the gray waters. VII Bill Bronson had no realization of the full might of the stream until he felt it around his body. The waters were fed from the snowfields on the dark peaks, and every nerve in his system seemed to snap and break in the first shock of immersion. But he quickly rallied, battling the stream with mighty strokes. He knew that if the rescue were accomplished, it would have to be soon. The torrent grew ever wilder as it sped down the canyon: no human being could live in the great, black whirlpool at its mouth. Besides, the cold would claim him soon. Just a few little instants of struggle, and then exhaustion, if indeed the icy waters did not paralyze his muscles. He swam with his eyes open, full in the current, and with a really incredible speed. And by the mercy of the forest gods almost at once he caught a glimpse of Virginia's dark tresses in the water. She was ten feet to one side, toward the Gray Lake shore of the river, and several feet in front. The man seemed simply to leap through the water. And in an instant more his arm went about her. "Give yourself to the current," he shouted. "And hang on to me."