hurled with dreadful speed on--full realization came--on the breast of
that racing torrent dropping from some far ocean cleft and
rushing--where? A little time, a few breathless instants, I struggled
with the devil who clutched me--inflexibly, indomitably.

Then a shrieking as of all the pent winds of the universe in my
ears--blackness!

Consciousness returned slowly, agonizedly.

"Larry!" I groaned. "Lakla!"

A brilliant light was glowing through my closed lids. It hurt. I
opened my eyes, closed them with swords and needles of dazzling pain
shooting through them. Again I opened them cautiously. It was the sun!

I staggered to my feet. Behind me was a shattered wall of basalt
monoliths, hewn and squared. Before me was the Pacific, smooth and
blue and smiling.

And not far away, cast up on the strand even as I had been,
was--Marakinoff!

He lay there, broken and dead indeed. Yet all the waters through
which we had passed--not even the waters of death themselves--could
wash from his face the grin of triumph. With the last of my strength I
dragged the body from the strand and pushed it out into the waves. A
little billow ran up, coiled about it, and carried it away, ducking
and bending. Another seized it, and another, playing with it. It
floated from my sight--that which had been Marakinoff, with all his