There is a section to the north and east of Great Slave Lake where the surface of the land is one heap of gigantic rocks. The land falls off to the west so rapidly that the streams are little more than cascades playing continually over giant stairways. It was into one of these unnatural streams that her father had fallen.
Even as Joyce stood looking, too terrified to move, Clyde Hawke, a powerful swimmer, plunged in after her father. So swift was the water, however, that he was three yards behind in the mad race for life.
Never very strong, Newton Mills, now prematurely old, offered little resistance to the wild torrent that appeared determined to carry him to destruction. One fortunate instance, for the moment, saved him. An overhanging snag caught at his stout jacket. It held for a space of seconds. Before the stout canvas gave way, he had secured a tight grip on the snag. Ten seconds more, and the brave young westerner, swimming with one hand, had gripped the older man by the arm and was struggling to bring him ashore.
The battle seemed all but won when, without warning, the snag gave way to cast them once more upon the mercy of the torrent.
To Joyce, who had made her way to the brink of the stream and stood ready to lend a hand, all seemed lost.
The last vestige of hope left her when, with a cry of horror, she saw them, tight in one another’s grip, disappear beneath the ice of the pool that lay beyond the rapids.
“They’re gone! Gone!” she sobbed.
But what was this? Beyond the narrow stretch of ice was a second chain of rapids less precipitous than the first. Poised on a rock at the very center of the rapids, she had seen a lone pelican waiting for fish. Now, as if disturbed, he rose and went flapping away.
“Can it be—”
Plunging headlong over rocks and treacherous ice, she made her way to this second space of open water. She was just in time to lean far over and grip Clyde by the collar of his coat. Then, securing a hold upon a stout willow bush, she clung with the grip of death. Not one life, but two, depended upon her strength and endurance. Clyde Hawke still retained his grip upon her father. Together they had passed beneath the ice and had come out on the other side.