Chapter 21

At that moment light came to her obscure mind. She was like the log. She refused to budge, funked the plunge, submitting to unending blows, and words which were almost worse than blows. And by her obstinacy and apathy she was driving the best man on God's earth to premeditated murder.

That morning, let us remember, Tom had beaten the dog, and because she had interfered with a pitiful protest her husband had struck her close to the temple. Ever since this blow she had heard the roar of the falls with increasing intensity.

"Why don't it move?" she asked herself.

As she put the question the log did move, borne away by the full current. Mamie, followed by the dog, ran after it, with her eyes aflame with excitement. Dennis barked, divining something uncanny, eager to distract the mind of his mistress from what seemed to be engrossing it. Still she ran on, with her eyes upon the log. The dog knew that she must stop in a moment, that no one could pass the falls unless they went over them. Did he divine also that she meant to go over them--that at last, with her poor, imperfect vision, she had seen that way out of captivity?

She reached the point where farther advance was impossible. To her right rose a solid wall of stone; opposite rose its twin; between the two the river rushed tumultuously, tossing the great logs hither and thither as if they were spilikins.

Mamie watched her own log. After its goadings it kept a truer course than most of its fellows. But she had outstripped it. Standing upon the edge of the precipice, feeling the cold spray upon her face, hearing the maddening roar of the monster below, less to be feared than that other monster from whom she realised that she had escaped, she waited for the final plunge....

What was passing in her mind at this supreme moment? We may well believe that she saw clearly the past through the mists which obscured the future. Always she had been a log at the mercy of a drunken father. Her mother had died in giving birth to her, but she knew vaguely that this mother was a Church member. She did not know--and, knowing, could never have understood--that from her she had inherited a conscience--or shall we call it an ineradicable instinct?--which constrained her to turn aside, shuddering, from certain temptations, to obey, without reasoning, certain ethical laws, solemnly expounded to her by a Calvinistic grandmother. But Nature had been too much for her. Even as she had turned instinctively and with horror from the breaking of a commandment, so also she had selected the mate who possessed in excess the physical qualities so conspicuously lacking in her. She had fallen a victim, and a reluctant victim, to the law of compensation. When Tom Barker held up his finger and whistled, she crawled to him.

The log, slightly rolling, as if intoxicated, neared the brink of the falls. And then it stopped again, where the river was narrowest and the current strongest. No log had stopped in this place before; Mamie saw that it was caught by a small rock, and held fast by the other logs behind it.

"It won't go over," she murmured.

Within a minute a terrific jam impended. Across the river Tom was swearing horribly; and between husband and wife rose a filmy cloud of spray upon which were imprinted the mysterious colours of the rainbow, which, long ago, Mamie had been taught to regard as the most wonderful symbol in the world--God's promise that in the end good should triumph over evil.

Afraid to move, fascinated, she stood still, staring at the rainbow.

Presently Tom disappeared. When he returned Mamie could see him very plainly. He had a stick of dynamite and a fuse. Mamie saw him glance at his watch and measure the fuse. Then, leaping from log to log, he approached the one in midstream which lay passive, blocking the advance of all the others. With splendid skill and daring he adjusted the dynamite upon the small rock which held the log, and lit the fuse. He returned as he had come, and Mamie could hear the cheers of the men upon the opposite bank.

"It'll hev to go now," she reflected.

At this moment Dennis, the dog, must have realised that his master had left something behind on the rock. Mamie saw him spring from log to log, and then, holding the dynamite between his teeth, with the spluttering fuse still attached, follow his master.

"Tom!" she screamed. "Look out!"

Tom turned and saw! And the others--Dennis Brown, Mamie, the river- drivers--saw also and trembled. Tom began to curse the dog, adjuring him to go back, to drop it, _drop IT_, DROP IT!

But the faithful creature, who had risked life to retrieve sticks thrown into fierce rapids, ran steadily on. Mamie saw the face of her husband crumble into an expression of hideous terror and palsy. His lips mouthed inarticulately, with his huge hands he tried to push back the monstrous fate that was overtaking him.

The dog laid the dynamite at his master's feet at the moment when it exploded.

* * * * *

And the man whose name was Dennis knew that his turn had come at last.