Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1916-03-22
2GE AGNEW CHAMBERLAIN


tugged at her ankles. She looked up
toward the laundering wall of oncom-
ing water and knew that she was lost.
She stopped and fixed her eyes on
Gerry. who was plunging down the
slope in mad effort to reach her. She
called to him. hut she knew he could
not hear her. With arms stretched to
their highest. she held up the Man. The
Man was not frightened. His black
eyes were fixed on Eis running father.
Margarita could feel him gurgling with
joy in the new game. Then suddenly
he cried out. 1t was a wall of fright.
The wall was cut short. Broken in
two, it rang terribly in her ears as
she went down.
The water had felled Margarita and
the Man. Gerry saw them flung down
the crest OF the wave. They became
suddenly a twirling sodden mass. in
animate save for the fling of a loose
limb into clearer view against the blue
sky or the uncoiling of long black hair
on the seething water
Gerry reached the torrent. Marga-
rita and the Man had already been
whirled far towards the great river.
He plunged into the flood. The water
was thick with earth. sticks, uprooted
plants and debris of every sort. Con-
flicting, swiring currents tugged at
heavy stones, rolled them along and
sometimes even tossed one to the sur
face.
Gerrys struggling body was hurled
hither and thither. 4 stray current
shot him to the surface. but before he
could take breath other currents
sucked him down and dragged him
along the rough surface of the crum-
bling soil. He felt as though he were
being torn limb from limb.
Then suddenly he was cast into an
eddy that in comparison with the mael-
strom was almost peaceful. For an
instant he felt like one who awakes
from a terrible dream. but with the
sigh that trembed to his lips came
realization.
From head to toe he was battered
and bruised. His cotton clothes were
in tatters. His chest heaved in great.
spasmodic sasps. Breath whistled
through his wrackcd lungs. His eyes
protruded. His head ached till it
seemed on the verge of bursting. But
to his mihd pierced a thought sharper
than pain-the thought of Margarita
and the Man. With clenched teeth he
struck out for the current.
Far. far away rose dusty line of
mist. 1t marked the head of the flood
the meeting Of water with the accumu-
lated dust of rainless months. Gerry
recognized the meaning of that line.
Somewhere there in the turmoil of the
first rush of the mad food were Mar
garita and the Man-what was left of
them. The distance dismayed him, but
he swan on. Then he felt the fast ap-
preaching end of endurance A sob
choked him.
1t was only minutes till his arms re-
fused to answer to his WILL They
moved so weakly that more than once
his gasping mouth sank below the wa
ter. He swallowed great gulps of the
turgid food. Thea an uprooted tree
brushed by him. He clutched its
branches.
When all else In the world has
passed from mans brain there re-
mains the life instinct-the will to fight
for the last minute of his allotted be-
Ing. The life instinct was all that still
lived in Gerry. 1t urged him to last
enort. He dragged his body upon the
Tree where the branches forked from
the main trunk. Utterly exhausted, he
sank into their embrace. They held
him as though in cradle.
The rush of the waters began to
slacken. They stretched out over the
valley and crept up its sides. They did
not flow so much now as rise The val
ley became moving sea. On its flow
Ing surface beasts, fowls and reptiles
struggled, mad-eyed, for life. Here
and there a bloated carcass, brought
down from far up the river, blundered
olindly through the living and brought
screams of terror from the swimming
horses, and gasping lows from the
struggling cattle.
From the middle of the sea rose the
old plantation house still high and dry
on its mound. 1t seemed very tiny
a toy house on a lonely islet.
A great, open. white umbrella lined
with green sailed gayly along. 1t
caught in the branches of Gerry's tree.
Uprooted cotton bushes fioated by, and
cane, snapped off, sometimes torn up
In whole hills, banked up against the
tree and formed a vast, unstable
Island, toward which swan the delud-
ed stock
From the mouth of the cleft in the
river gorge issued a laundering cata-
ract. 1t had burst through the walls
of the ditch and even unseated a sec
ton of the rocky crag against which
the suice-gate had been buttressed.
The ditch was gone. 1t could never
be again, for the water was tearing
the channel of the cleft deeper and
deeper. The turbid flood devoured the
silt of the valley. accumulated since
man was, and carried it, seething. out
towards the river, The valley would
be left naked, stripped of the source
OF life.
Gerrv'a frea had crawIod o-av FROM