But the peril of being crushed in the tumbling conglomeration of debris was far from being the only risk. He knew that at any instant he might be battered against a boulder, or ground between the trunk and the rocky walls of the gorge. True, the jagged stumps of the branches at one end of the trunk, and the spreading mass of roots at the other to some extent served to protect him from the rocks. Once, indeed, he felt a shock and became conscious of a numbness in his right leg. He never knew whether it was a jutting boulder or a log which had struck him.
He was becoming dizzy from the ceaseless whirling, and from the repeated necessity of holding his breath. He feared he would become so dazed that his grip on the tree would relax. The tree collided with another rock, and the shock left him breathless.
Strangely enough, he had no fear of drowning, so long as he could remain conscious. He knew that unconsciousness meant drowning, or else being beaten to a lifeless pulp against the rocks. But every few seconds he would find himself thrown above the water as the trunk revolved in the murky maelstrom. And each time he managed to gasp for breath before he was again submerged.
Suddenly above the roar of the flood came a terrific, wrenching crash, accompanied by a shock that left his senses reeling. There was a rending and a tearing of splintered wood. He felt his grip loosen on the rough trunk. The lower part of his body was torn away from the tree.
“This is the end,” was the one thought that emerged from the confusion of his senses.
The flood clutched at him, dragged him along the trunk, his manacled wrists jerking and tearing along the rough bark. Darkness overwhelmed him. He felt that he was floating away on billowy clouds. The roar of the flood grew dim....
Returning consciousness found Otis Carr lying on a high gravel bar. He started to raise a hand to his eyes; but he had forgotten the handcuffs.
He sat up. He still heard the roar of the flood. As his brain cleared, he saw the brown waters rushing past, less than a yard from his feet. A chocolate fountain spurted high in the air where the rushing waters encountered a submerged rock. The tree—
He looked about for the tree that first had been the means of pinioning him in the path of the flood, and then had been the means of saving his life. Thirty yards upstream he saw a mass of roots jammed between two boulders. An immense splinter was all that remained of the bole. The branches and upper portion of the trunk were nowhere to be seen.