The World For Sale | Page 6

to those who watched her course--to
Tekewani and his braves, to Osterhaut and Jowett--could not be long. It
was a matter of minutes only, in which every second was a miracle and
might be a catastrophe.
From rock to rock, from wild white water to wild white water she sped,
now tossing to death as it seemed, now shooting on safely to the next
test of skill and courage--on, on, till at last there was only one passage
to make before the canoe would plunge into the smooth water running
with great swiftness till it almost reached Carillon.
Suddenly, as she neared the last dangerous point, round which she must
swing between jagged and unseen barriers of rock, her sight became for
an instant dimmed, as though a cloud passed over her eyes. She had
never fainted in her life, but it seemed to her now that she was hovering
on unconsciousness. Commending the will and energy left, she fought

the weakness down. It was as though she forced a way through tossing,
buffeting shadows; as though she was shaking off from her shoulders
shadowy hands which sought to detain her; as though smothering
things kept choking back her breath, and darkness like clouds of wool
gathered about her face. She was fighting for her life, and for years it
seemed to be; though indeed it was only seconds before her will
reasserted itself, and light broke again upon her way. Even on the verge
of the last ambushed passage her senses came back; but they came with
a stark realization of the peril ahead: it looked out of her eyes as a face
shows itself at the window of a burning building.
Memory shook itself free. It pierced the tumult of waters, found the
ambushed rocks, and guided the lithe brown arms and hands, so that the
swift paddle drove the canoe straight onward, as a fish drives itself
through a flume of dragon's teeth beneath the flood. The canoe
quivered for an instant at the last cataract, then responding to Memory
and Will, sped through the hidden chasm, tossed by spray and water,
and swept into the swift current of smooth water below.
Fleda Druse had run the Rapids of Carillon. She could hear the bells
ringing for evening service in the Catholic Church of Carillon, and
bells-soft, booming bells-were ringing in her own brain. Like muffled
silver these brain-bells were, and she was as one who enters into a deep
forest, and hears far away in the boscage the mystic summons of forest
deities. Voices from the banks of the river behind called to her--
hilarious, approving, agitated voices of her Indian friends, and of
Osterhaut and Jowett, those wild spectators of her adventure: but they
were not wholly real. Only those soft, booming bells in her brain were
real.
Shooting the Rapids of Carillon was the bridge by which she passed
from the world she had left to this other. Her girlhood was
ended--wondering, hovering, unrealizing girlhood. This adventure was
the outward sign, the rite in the Lodge of Life which passed her from
one degree of being to another.
She was safe; but now as her canoe shot onward to the town of Carillon,
her senses again grew faint. Again she felt the buffeting mist, again her

face was muffled in smothering folds; again great hands reached out
towards her; again her eyes were drawn into a stupefying darkness; but
now there was no will to fight, no energy to resist. The paddle lay inert
in her fingers, her head drooped. She slowly raised her head once, twice,
as though the call of the exhausted will was heard, but suddenly it fell
heavily upon her breast. For a moment so, and then as the canoe shot
forward on a fresh current, the lithe body sank backwards in the canoe,
and lay face upward to the evening sky.
The canoe sped on, but presently it swung round and lay athwart the
current, dipping and rolling.
From the banks on either side, the Indians of the Manitou Reservation
and the two men from Lebanon called out and hastened on, for they
saw that the girl had collapsed, and they knew only too well that her
danger was not yet past. The canoe might strike against the piers of the
bridge at Carillon and overturn, or it might be carried to the second
cataract below the town. They were too far away to save her, but they
kept shouting as they ran.
None responded to their call, but that defiance of the last cataract of the
Rapids of Carillon had been seen by one who, below an eddy on the
Lebanon side of the river, was steadily stringing upon maple-twigs
black bass and long-nosed pike. As he sat in the