There was a shove, a word, a dip of the paddles, and the canoe shot out
to the deeper waters, and none aboard her saw the form of Edmonton
Ridgar draw back into the shelter of tangled vines on shore.
"Give me a blade!"
From the rocking bottom Maren was reaching for a paddle, got it, thrust
by some one into her hands, and was cleaving water with the best of
them, deep stroke after deep stroke, the rush and suck of the eddy in
her ears.
In the cold blue darkness the stream whispered and warned like some old
witch at her cauldron, the night was clammy, and behind the new fires
flared against the towering trees.
A babble of voices told of pursuit,--shouts and gutturals that strung
out from the camp all through the gorge and were beginning to flow with
the river.
"Only a matter of time,--a little time," thought Wilson, at the prow,
but never a word was uttered in the canoe.
Exerting every atom of strength, calling on all the will-power aboard,
they shot forward into the night and the current.
The noise behind increased, as the tones of a bell blown by the wind
increase when the wind sets in one's direction.
"Not now!" Maren was saying to herself.
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