He dropped the sweep and sprang to her.
"Beta!" he shouted, louder than the droning tumult. "No use! No use at all! Here--come to me!"
He drew the sweep inboard and flung it in the bottom of the yawl.
Already the vapors of the cataract ahead were drifting over them and driving in their faces. A vibrant booming shuddered through the dark air, where now even the moon's faint light was all extinguished by the whirling mists.
Heaven and sea shook with the terrible concussion of falling waters. Though Stern had shouted, yet the girl could not have heard him now.
In the gloom he peered at her; he took her in his arms. Her face was pale, but very calm. She showed no more fear than the man; each seemed inspired with some strange exultant thought of death, there with the other.
He drew her to his breast and covered her face; he knelt with her among the heaped-up furs, and then, as the yawl plunged more violently still, they sank down in the poor shelter of the cabin and waited.
His arms were about her; her face was buried on his breast. He smoothed her hair; his lips pressed her forehead.
"Good-by!" he whispered, though she could not hear.
They seemed now to hover on the very brink.
A long, racing sluicelike incline of black waters, streaked with swirls of white, appeared before them. The boat plunged and whirled, dipped, righted, and sped on.
Behind, a huge, rushing, wall-like mass of lathering, leaping surges. In front, a vast nothingness, a black, unfathomable void, up through which gushed in clouds the mighty jets of vapor.
Came a lurch, a swift plunge.
The boat hung suspended a moment.
Stern saw what seemed a long, clear, greenish slant of water. Deafened and dazed by the infernal pandemonium of noise, he bowed his head on hers, and his arms tightened.
Suddenly everything dropped away. The universe crashed and bellowed.
Stern felt a heavy dash of brine--cold, strangling, irresistible.
All grew black.
"Death!" thought he, and knew no more.