Rankin's party and the multitude of spectators now watched what they could see in breathless silence. At times, as the swimmers approached, our party could see them hoisted in the air on the top of a wave, or ridge or upheaval of water. Most of the time they were lost to sight in the gulleys or, valleys, or else they were beneath the surface. It does not take long to go a few hundred yards at nineteen miles an hour, and in what scarcely seemed more than an instant the man, with the dog still in front of him, had come near them. What Jack noticed was that as the man here shook the water out of his eyes and raised himself, shoulders out, by "treading water," his skin was almost scarlet. This, alone told a tale of what he had gone through since the people on the bridges had remarked the whiteness of his skin.
He was now almost opposite them, and his face, set desperately, turned, during an instant in a quieter spot, toward the platform. Margaret gave a piercing shriek, and fell back into Rankin's arms. At the next half-moment a huge boiling mountain, foaming up against the current in which the swimmer's body floated, struck him a terrible blow, and threw the dog back on top of him. Both were engulfed. After a while the dog's head appeared again, but Geoffrey Hampstead was overwhelmed in the Bedlam of waters, whose foaming, raging madness battered out his life.