He would succeed; he saw it the next moment. The curving tree seemed to be sweeping up stream with frightful swiftness, but at the right second Terry, by a supreme effort, threw himself partly out of the water, and flinging both arms around the trunk, which was no more than six inches in diameter, he held fast.
The strain was great, and he felt his fingers slipping over the shaggy bark, but he held on like grim death, and by a skillful upward hitch of his body, locked his fingers above the trunk, and was safe; he was then able to hold double his own weight.
His next move was to throw his feet around the trunk, when it was an easy matter for him to twist himself over on top, where he was as secure as lying on his own trundle bed in the cabin at home.
The instant his own safety was secured his whole soul was stirred by anxiety for Fred Linden, who, he knew, was placed at more disadvantage than he. Since he was further from shore than was he, and since the latter had been able to save himself only by a hair's breadth, it was clearly beyond the power of Fred to escape in the same manner—though it might be that there was some other remote chance for him.
The first glance that Terry cast over the muddy waters showed him his friend, swimming manfully for shore, but so far out in the stream that it was impossible for him to reach it before passing into the grip of the rapids.
"It's no use," called out Fred, in a voice in which there was no tremor or shrinking; "I'm bound for the rapids, and here goes."
And deliberately facing about, he swam coolly in the direction of the boiling waters as though he were bathing in a still lake.
"Be the powers, but he is plucky," muttered Terence, thrilled by the sight; "if he can get through there alive, I'll be proud of him!"
The rapids, of which I have made mention several times, were caused by a series of irregular rocks, extending a hundred yards, in the space of which the stream made a descent of a dozen or twenty feet. At ordinary times the creek wound languidly around these obstructions, forming many deep, clear pools of water, that afforded the best kind of fishing. There was so much room for the current that there was no call for it to make haste.
But you can understand how different it was when the creek was swollen by violent rains. It then dashed against the rocks, was thrown back, plunged against others, whirled about and charged upon still others, by which time it was a mass of seething foam, with the spray flying high in air, and a faint rainbow showing through the mist when the sun was shining. After fighting its way between and around and over these obstructions, the current emerged at the bottom one mass of boiling foam and dancing bubbles, which continued for several hundred feet before the effects of the savage churning that the water had received could be shaken off.