The strain was intense; the danger deadly.

Suddenly, straight ahead, beyond the darkness of the foliage, gleamed a line of light; shimmering, liquid, and glassy--here brown as gloom where the shadows fell on it, here light as life where the stars mirrored on it.

That trembling line stretched right in their path.

For the first time, from the blanched lips beside him a cry of terror rang.
"The river!--oh, heaven!--the river!" There it lay in the distance, the deep and yellow water, cold in the moon's rays, with its further bank but a dull gray line in the mists that rose from it, and its swamp a yawning grave as the horses, blind in their delirium and racing against each other, bore down through all obstacles toward its brink.

Death was rarely ever closer; one score yards more, one plunge, one crash down the declivity and against the rails, one swell of the noisome tide above their heads, and life would be closed and passed for both of them.