She slowly raised her head once, twice, as though the call of the exhausted will was heard, but suddenly it fell heavily upon her breast.

For a moment so, and then as the canoe shot forward on a fresh current, the lithe body sank backwards in the canoe, and lay face upward to the evening sky.
The canoe sped on, but presently it swung round and lay athwart the current, dipping and rolling.
From the banks on either side, the Indians of the Manitou Reservation and the two men from Lebanon called out and hastened on, for they saw that the girl had collapsed, and they knew only too well that her danger was not yet past.

The canoe might strike against the piers of the bridge at Carillon and overturn, or it might be carried to the second cataract below the town.

They were too far away to save her, but they kept shouting as they ran.
None responded to their call, but that defiance of the last cataract of the Rapids of Carillon had been seen by one who, below an eddy on the Lebanon side of the river, was steadily stringing upon maple-twigs black bass and long-nosed pike.

As he sat in the shade of the trees, he had seen the plunge of the canoe into the chasm, and had held his breath in wonder and admiration.