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CHAPTER V

A BRAVE RESCUE

HEN Hubert Stane took stock of his position, after his captors had left him, he found himself in a country which was strange to him, and spent the best part of a day in ascertaining his whereabouts. The flow of the wide river where the camp had been pitched told him nothing, and it was only after he had climbed a high hill a mile and a half away from the river that he began to have any indication of his whereabouts. Then with the country lying before him in a bird's-eye view he was able to learn his position. There was more than one river in view, and a chain of small lakes lay between one of them and the river where he had been left by his captors. From the last of those lakes a long portage, such as had been made on the last day but one of the journey, would bring them to a river which a few miles away joined the river on the bank of which he had been left to shift for himself. Studying the disposition of the country carefully, he reached the conclusion that by a roundabout journey he had been brought to the river on the upper reaches of which he had his permanent camp; and as the conviction grew upon him, he made his way back to the canoe, and began to work his way upstream.

As he paddled, the problem of his deportation exercised his mind; and nowhere could he find any explanation of it, unless it had to do with Miskodeed. But that explanation failed as he recalled the words of her father: "It is an order." Who had given the order? He thought in turn of the factor, of Sir James Yardely, of Gerald Ainley. The first two were instantly dismissed, but the thought of Ainley remained fermenting in his mind. It was an odd coincidence that he should have been attacked whilst awaiting Ainley's coming, and in view of his onetime friend's obvious reluctance to an interview and of his own urgent reasons for desiring it; the suspicion that Ainley was the man who had issued the order for his forcible deportation grew until it became almost a conviction.

"I will find out about this- - and the other thing," he said aloud. "I can't go back now, but sooner or later my chance will come. The cur!"

That evening he camped at the foot of a fall, which he had heard of, but never before seen, and spent the whole of the next day in portaging his belongings to navigable water, and on the following evening well beyond the rocky ramparts, where the river ran so swiftly, made his camp, happily conscious that now the river presented no barrier for two hundred miles.

As he sat smoking outside his little tent, an absent, thoughtful look upon his face, his eyes fixed dreamily on the river, his mind reverted once more to the problem of recent happenings, and as he considered it, there came to him the picture of Miskodeed

as he had seen her running towards him between the willows just before the blow which had knocked him unconscious. She had cried to him to put him on his guard, and the apprehension in her face as he remembered it told him that she knew of the ill that was to befall him. His mind dwelt on her for a moment as he visioned her face with its bronze beauty, her dark, wild eyes flashing with apprehension for him, and as he did so his own eyes softened a little. He recalled the directness of her speech in their first conversation and smiled at the naïveté of her estimate of himself. Then the smile died, leaving the absent, thoughtful look more pronounced, and in the same moment the vision of Miskodeed was obliterated by the vision of Helen Yardely the woman of his own race, fair and softly-strong, and as different as well as could be from the daughter of the wilds.

Again, as he recalled the steady scrutinizing glance of her grey eyes, he felt the blood rioting in his heart, and for a moment his eyes were alight with dreams. Then he laughed in sudden bitterness.

What a confounded fool I am!" he said. "A discharged convict

"

The utterance was suddenly checked; and an interested look came on his face. There was something coming down the river. He rose quickly to his feet in order to get a better view of the object which had suddenly floated into his line of vision. It was a canoe. It appeared to be empty, and thinking it was a derelict drifting from some camp up river, he threw himself down again, for even if

he salved it, it could be of no possible use to him. Lying there he watched it as it drifted nearer in the current, wondering idly whence it had come. Nearer it came, swung this way and that by various eddies, and drifting towards the further side of the river where about forty yards above his camp a mass of rock broke the smooth surface of the water. He wondered whether the current would swing it clear; and now watched it with interest since he had once heard a river-man declare that anything that surrendered itself completely to a current would clear obstructions. He had not believed the theory at the time, and now before his eyes it was disproved; for the derelict swung straight towards the rocks, then twisted half-way round as it was caught by some swirl, and struck a sharp piece of rock broadside on.

Then happened a totally unexpected thing. As the canoe struck, a girl who had been lying at the bottom, raised herself suddenly, and stared at the water overside, one hand clutching the gunwale. A second later the canoe drifted against another rock and suddenly tilted, throwing the girl into the broken water.

By this time, taken by surprise though he was, Stane was on his feet, and running down the bank. He did not stop to launch his canoe but just as he was flung himself into the water, and started to swim across the river, drifting a little with the current, striving to reach a point where he could intercept the girl as she drifted down. It was no light task he had set himself, for the current was strong, and

carried him further than he intended to go, but he was in front of the piece of human flotsam which the river was claiming for its prey, and as it came nearer he stretched a hand and grasped at it. He caught a handful of chestnut hair that floated like long weed in the river's tide, and the next moment turned the girl over on her back. She was unconscious, but as he glimpsed at her face, his heart leaped, for it was the face of that fair English girl of whom but a few minutes before he had been dreaming. For a second he was overcome with amazement, then stark fear leapt in his heart as he looked at the closed eyes and the white, unconscious face.

That fear shook him from his momentary inactivity. He looked for something else to hold by, and finding nothing, twisted the long strand of hair he had gripped into a rope, and held it with his teeth. Then he glanced round. The current had carried him further than he had realized, and now quickened for its rush between the rocky ramparts, so that there was some danger of their being caught and swept through. As he realized that, he began to exert all his strength, striking across the current for the nearest bank, which was the one furthest from his camp.

The struggle was severe, and the girl's body drifting against him impeded his movements terribly. It seemed impossible that he could make the bank, and the ramparts frowned ominously ahead. He was already wondering what the chances were of making the passage through in safety, and was half-inclined to surrender to the current and take the risks ahead,