On the left, in shadow, a narrow beach seemed to lie between the water and
the cliff foot; towards it I fought. At the very first stroke I fouled
a raft; the occupant thereof came tumbling aboard and nearly swamped me.
But now it was a fight for life, so him I seized without ceremony by
clammy neck and leg and threw back into the water. Then another playful
Martian butted the behind part of my canoe and set it spinning, so that
all the stars seemed to be dancing giddily in the sky. With a yell I
shoved him off, but only to find his comrades were closing round me in
a solid ring as we sucked down to the abyss at ever-increasing speed.

Then I fought like a fury, hacking, pushing, and paddling shorewards,
crying out in my excitement, and spinning and bumping and twisting
ever downwards. For every foot I gained they pushed me on a yard,
as though determined their fate should be mine also.

They crowded round me in a compact circle, their poor flower-girt heads
nodding as the swift current curtsied their crafts. They hemmed me in
with desperate persistency as we spun through the ghostly starlight in a
swirling mass down to destruction! And in a minute we were so close to
the edge of the fall I could see the water break into ridges as it felt
the solid bottom give way under it. We were so close that already the
foremost rafts, ten yards ahead, were tipping and their occupants one
by one waving their arms about and tumbling from their funeral chairs as
they shot into the spray veil and went out of sight under a faint rainbow
that was arched over there, the symbol of peace and the only lovely thing
in that gruesome region. Another minute and I must have gone with them.
It was too late to think of getting out of the tangle then; the water
behind was heavy with trailing silks and flowers. We were jammed together
almost like one huge float and in that latter fact lay my one chance.