And the same glance that showed him this, showed also the face of the boy who had made the fearful plunge, only for an instant, like his view of the canoe. The face, white and motionless, rose from the water, and then sunk out of view, as it sped down the current, with scarcely less speed than the river possessed directly above the falls themselves.
That one look was sufficient for Little Rifle. A sudden hope came to his heart that the lad might still have the breath of life in his body, and placing his gun upon the rock at his feet, he concentrated all his strength and made a leap directly toward the spot where he had seen the face, shouting at the same time, with all the strength of which he was capable, in the hope of arousing him to do something for himself.
The most skillful swimmer can not fight his way through froth and foam, its specific gravity being too slight for it to support his weight, while the danger is that he will be strangled before he can reach the water that will support him. Little Rifle fully understood this before he made his daring plunge, but the glimpse that he had obtained of the boy had proved that he had something in his favor that fully counterbalanced this. The very violence of the foamy waters was such that it drove all foreign bodies to the surface for a second or two, without any effort upon their part.
Little Rifle kept his senses about him, as he felt himself sinking downward, downward, in the resistless grasp of the current. He had taken a deep inspiration during the instant he was making his flight through the air, and he now held his breath until he could gain the chance to renew it.
The crash and roar, the blinding mist and spinning eddies, the arrow-like descent, these were enough to drive all the wits from a man’s brain, and the boy had hardly thrown himself into the vortex when the conviction flashed upon him, that the strange boy was not only past all hope but that he had put himself in the same position by his mad plunge into the water, in the hope of rescuing him.
But Little Rifle was too brave a lad to yield up his life without a struggle, and, with all the strength and skill of which he was master, he made a desperate effort to get his face to the surface only for a second—a single instant—that he might gain a single breath of the all-revivifying air.
CHAPTER VIII.
OUT OF THE JAWS OF DEATH.
At this instant, while Little Rifle was making such a tremendous effort to save himself, his shoulder struck something. He supposed that it was the canoe, or that he had grazed a rock in his meteor-like passage through the water; but, the wild hope that it was neither of these, caused him to throw out his arm and clutch at it.
As he did so, he found that he had grasped the arm of the boy, for whose sake he had made this desperately perilous attempt.
Having got it in his grasp, Little Rifle did not let it go again, but held to it, as though his own life depended upon the result, while, with the other arm and his feet, he redoubled his efforts to make the surface of the turbulent current.