He raised his hand and drew it across his forehead and eyes.
The boat with the helpless woman was already past the front of the house.
Betty Jo cried again as if calling the man she loved from a distance: "Brian! Brian!" With a sudden movement, the man jerked away from her.

The next instant, he had leaped over the railing of the porch to the ground below and was running with all his might toward the river, at an angle which would put him opposite or a little below the boat when he reached the bank.
With a sob, Betty Jo followed as fast as she could.
As Brian Kent raced toward the river's edge, the powerful current drew the boat with the woman into the first rough water of the rapids, and, as the skiff was shaken and tossed by the force that was sweeping it with ever-increasing speed toward the wild turmoil at Elbow Rock, the woman screamed again and again for help.
The warring forces of the stream whirled the little craft about, and she saw the man who was nearing the bank.

She rose to her feet in the rocking boat, and stretched out her arms,--calling his name, "Brian! Brian! Brian!" Then the impact of the boat against a larger wave of the rapids brought her to her knees, and she clung to the thwarts with piteous cries.
Betty Jo and the clubhouse men, who had overtaken her, saw Brian as he reached the river opposite the boat.

For a little way he raced the tumbling waters until he had gained a short distance ahead of the skiff; then they saw him, without an instant's pause, leap from the high bank far out into the boiling stream.
Running along the bank, the helpless watchers saw the man fighting his way toward the boat.

One moment, he disappeared from sight, dragged beneath the surface by the powerful currents with which he wrestled.