Acey Smith stopped one instant. The next he seized her below the knees.
“Stiffen out!” he commanded.
As the tide of water smote them she was conscious of being thrust upward by his powerful arms, of his fingers releasing themselves from her lower limbs and of her form being catapulted unerringly through space to the mouth of the tunnel and into the arms of Louis Hammond.
All went black for the briefest space. With a supreme effort of will she warded off the fainting spell.
She, with the others, was looking with horrified fascination into the channel where the water wall had swept on and ceased to flow. On the wet rock bottom lay Acey Smith, face up, where he had been flung by the torrent that was cut off too late.
His great proud form, which a moment ago had been flexing, powerful muscles, was ominously inert, and from a corner of his mouth trickled a crimson stream.
Willing arms carried him up the stone steps, through the tunnel and out into the open. There they laid him gently upon the sward.
The girl bent over him her hand feeling for his heartbeats as she tenderly wiped the blood-stains from his mouth and cheek, Hammond silently kneeling beside her.
At her touch Acey Smith’s eyes fluttered and there came a wan smile of recognition as he looked from the girl’s face to Hammond’s.
Tremblingly, he groped for a hand of each and brought them together over his breast.