She turned away, stopped—turned back again.
There it was eddying about in the swirling water. It was bright! Bright! Bright like metal! And metal did not float—
Except!
With a new strange thought she clambered rapidly down over the stones and reached the level of the ouzel’s throne. She found a long stick, but it was far too short to reach the queer object tossing upon the boiling water. She watched it tremblingly. It was metal. No inner bark could assume that brightness, no slime of the water could cause a piece of limb to deceive the eye so easily.
All eagerness, fearful of disillusionment, she tested the water’s depth, but had known before she did so that she dared not venture in.
The riotous current, twisting this way and that without stability of direction, had swept the bright object to the middle of the pool once more. And now it struck the main channel and went racing downstream, past the water ouzel’s perch, and into the straight stretch of river below.
And Charmian knew that it was of metal and meant for her.
The lost river! Down Lost River, through the mysterious underground passages, Dr. Inman Shonto had sent a message to her, incased in a metal cylinder!
Feverish with anxiety, she clambered over the stones and reached the level land above the pool. Now, running with all her might, she followed the river’s course through the heavy snow. The metal cylinder was being swept downstream at a rapid rate. Her only hope lay in reaching the canoe ahead of it, and paddling out to await its coming.
Trees and boulders shut off her view of the river. Hence she had no notion of the speed of the drifting cylinder, and in greatest excitement and dread of loss she waded on through the drifts, streaming perspiration. Almost the last rational act of Andy Jerome before he succumbed to the hideous malady had been to paddle the canoe upstream as near as possible to the cave. He had been obliged to beach it below a second waterfall, past which the two of them had been unable to carry it.