He was looking at Ruth, and longing to loose his
hold on the bough, long enough to wave the assurance that his voice
could not carry across the roaring waters. And this was the instant that
Nature chose to mock the pitting of his puny powers against her
resistless forces. A fierce wave tore away the roots that the tree bound
to the bank, and hurled it into the flood. It swung round and turned
partly over, burying the bough that they clung to, deep under the water.
Both went down with it and Paul Colbert thought, with the quickness and
clearness of mind that comes to the drowning, that they could never come
up again. When he found his own head once more above water, with his
hand grasping a bough of a smaller tree, which had been driven close to
the shore, he looked round for Philip Alston. There was no silver head
anywhere to be seen now above the thick, dark river. Half stunned, he
gazed again blankly, feeling vaguely that his own head must go down very
soon; his strength was wholly gone; he could not even see the shore,
though it was very near, because he was not strong enough to lift
himself above the trunk of the tree which hid it from his sight.
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