The splashing, roaring flood whirled on, throwing up clouds of spume where here and there great waves hurled themselves on to some obstruction. Once the ghastly white head of a drowned calf rose up out of the water just by them, a spectral stare in the lustreless eyes. The lowering afternoon was darkening.
“I believe we could make for terra-firma—that means solid ground—if we went to work carefully,” said Warren. “What do you think, Charlie? Shall we try? The swirl up here is fairly light, and you must think you are only swimming in the kloof dam.”
The boy looked out upon the roaring rush of waters and shuddered. Not among this would their venture lead them, but among much smoother water, to safety. Still, he was unnerved after his experience of that awful force, his choking, suffocating, helpless, all but drowning condition. But he was plucky to the core.
“All right. Let’s try,” he said. “But keep hold of my hand, won’t you.”
“Of course,” said Warren. And then once more they struck off, entrusting themselves to the stream, or rather to its eddies.
Chapter Twenty.
In the Roar of the Flood.
Lalanté and her small brother, watching from the bank the earlier struggle with the awful forces, were at first frantic with grief and horror; then the sense of having someone dependent on her was as a nerve-bracing tonic to the girl, and she recovered a modicum of coolness.