She felt herself beginning to fail. Already in the forest and the swamp she had been tired, before ever she began this losing fight with the water; and even had she not been tired it would still have been beyond her. As the force of the current strengthened again she abandoned all attempt to swim steadily across it, merely drifting passively and then suddenly snatching a quick stroke or two, for all the world as though hoping that the demon might not catch sight of her in time. She must be in midstream-now-of that much she felt sure-but still her half-blinded, water-filled eyes could make out no trace of the opposite bank.
Suddenly pain ripped down the length of her right thigh. Something jagged had pierced her, torn her. Clutching at the place, she was instantly pulled under, mouth and throat full of water, choking; kicking to get her head above the surface. She came up to find herself drifting backwards, and as her eyes cleared saw flash past her in the gloom a glistening, humped, irregular shape, solid amid spatterings of gray foam. An instant later it was followed by another. She was among rocks. It must have been a sharp rock which had gashed her.
Even as she realized her danger the shape of another rock as big as herself came rushing towards her out of the blackness of the river. There was turbulent noise all around her now-a jagged expanse of broken water, roaring and booming. It was like being among a herd of stampeding beasts.
Thrusting out both hands, she clutched at a pointed, uneven projection of rock and clung to it amid the tumult, seeking no more than to hold herself where she was. Now that the demon had driven her into a trap from which all her strength and skill as a swimmer could not save her, now that her death was certain, her only thought was simply to survive the next moment. Soon she would not have the strength even to retain her hold on the smooth, wet stone. There was no pain along her thigh now, but the
water, in the gash, felt very cold: she must be losing blood fast.
It was then, as she hung swaying to and fro at the end of her clenched fingers, that she suddenly glimpsed a glow of fire in the dark. Far off-what did "far off" mean, in this welter where she could move no way but deathward?- yet it was real, it was not her fancy. It was downstream of her and on her right. It was not a lamp or torch, but the redness of a burning fire; and for an instant-or so it seemed to her-she could hear voices. With all her remaining strength she shouted; listened, then shouted again. There was no reply. Yet the fire burned on. And if she could reach it she would live and not die.
She let go of the rock, giving a strong push with her legs, lunging away, thrusting herself as hard as she could across the current in the direction of the fire. Instantly there appeared another rock, low in the stream, almost level with the surface, split and fissured. The water poured over and through it. Trying to cling to it, she could find no hold and was swept onward.
Then began a nightmare of scraping and jarring, of grabbing, of seizing and losing hold, of gasping and choking and an endless succession of heavy, horribly painful blows, as though she were being beaten with stone hammers. Sometimes she clung, sometimes she knelt, sometimes she fell. Once, in struggling, she kicked a rock and screamed with pain, sure that she must have broken her toes. Yet surely the fire was nearer?
As often as her head went under the water resounded far and near with the chattering of stones. She was bemused now, no longer capable of thought, mindless of past or future or of where she had come from. She had never done anything in her life but struggle and writhe in this howling, rock-strewn darkness, the fanged mouth of the water demon, to be bitten small and gulped down into the Valderra.
A voice was shouting: her own voice or another's? In her own mind, or the voice of some bygone victim, some water-ghost wailing in the cataract? Why must she go on suffering, why could she not submit herself to the river and drown? Yet she could not, but still gulped and fought for air, no longer swimming, becoming nothing but flotsam tossed and battered from rock to rock. Looking up suddenly, she saw the fire quite plainly. It was level with her;
and it must be close, for she could actually make out the shape of a blazing log. There were-O Lespa!-there were
Next moment her head struck heavily against a rock. For a moment she felt a dizzy, sickening pain, and then nothing more.
