Guided by an unseen power, the frail raft rose and fell with the current, whirling round and round like an eggshell, creaking, groaning, and straining at its bonds, like a fettered giant; but the wretched castaways, sprawled in careless attitude across the logs, heard nothing, knew nothing—simply lay with their pallid faces turned toward the blackness and the gloom overhead.
Ah, how pitiful! If they could only have known what was close at hand, fresh life would have flowed into their wasted veins. They would have gone mad with joy.
The roar of the water had now become softened and less violent. The rocks had disappeared, the river slipped like an avalanche through the fast narrowing channel, and at such a prodigious speed that a cold blast of air whistled about the raft.
Chutney, still propped against the canoe, caught its full effect on his face. It stirred up the flickering spark of life within him and he opened his eyes; he thought he saw a faint gleam of daylight.
Like the fabled giant that sprang from an uncorked phial, the gray streak expanded with marvelous celerity, growing longer and wider and brighter until it shone like burnished silver on the hurrying tide of the river.
Guy saw it and that was all. It dazzled his eyes and he closed them. When he looked again the raft was trembling on the edge of the silvery sheet, and then, swift as the lightning flash, a flood of brightness sprang up and around it.
He closed his eyes, but the fierce glare seemed to be burning into his very brain. He could not shut it out, though he thrust a trembling arm across his closed eyes.
The next instant something rough and pliable struck his face with stinging force, and he felt the warm blood trickle down his cheeks. Instantly there came a second shock. The canoe was whirled forcibly from under him, and a heavy blow from some unseen object struck him with stunning violence to the hard logs.
An icy wave dashed over the raft, and then another and another. Smarting with pain, the blood dripping from his lacerated face and hands, he staggered to his knees.
He opened his eyes. At first he could see nothing for the dazzling light that was all around him. Then the blindness passed suddenly away, and he saw clearly.