The board gave, gaped an inch. Then the force of the water swept in behind, driving the loose board out across the flume.
Ormond was beaten back with it, under the cross-ties, with all the wrath of heaven upon him. The roar overside jolted sense from his brain, and death seemed a little thing that mattered not. For the Lion was saved—the Lion———
It was Randal who shook him into consciousness with merciless hands.
“Come off! Curse it, will you come? Ormond———”
The mechanic in Ormond told him that the water would very presently dig out the trestles, pitch them forward, and part the flume. Animal instinct brought his numbed hands groping for the cross-ties. Randal was behind him, goading him forward, hauling him up where he stumbled in the lessening flood. The flume dipped underfoot, rocked as though an earthquake had it by the muscles, fell out sideways with a crashing thunder and a screech of tearing wood that overrode the yell of the storm.
Somewhere on the edge of the wreck Randal hung, gripping Ormond. Somewhere in the black slippery staging he found foothold for both, so that they crawled forward to fall on the sand hollows and the manuka where the rain beat, and to lie there until morning was red.
