She was searching for some sign of their lost companion. The wide circling of her glass continued for a full three minutes. Then of a sudden, as her lips parted and her face became tense, the glass remained directed at one spot, far off in the river valley.
“Grandfather! Grandfather!” she exclaimed after ten tense seconds, “Wake up! There are people on that river island. They are marooned! The river is rising. The floods will reach them and sweep them away unless help comes. We must go!”
Gordon Duncan was now on his feet. Seizing the glass, he studied the situation for a moment, then said quietly:
“You are right. We must help them. At once!”
“But how?” said the girl. “We have no boat.”
“God will show us the way.”
Three minutes later, disregarding the water boiling for coffee, carrying only their bow and quiver of arrows apiece, they went racing down the mountain side.
The memory of that race will remain long with Faye Duncan. Slipping, sliding, now racing, now gliding and now creeping, they made their way downward. Now their path was a plateau, now a cliff, and now the bed of a boiling, rushing stream. Now they seemed about to send an avalanche sweeping down. And now, as they attempted to cross a turbulent torrent they appeared in greater danger than those whom they would rescue.
In the end they won the race, only to find themselves standing at the river’s brink with a hundred yards of rushing water between them and those whom they would save, and with no apparent means of rendering any aid.
“Well,” said the girl, “what next?”