IN THE SHADOW
follow his directions; she pushed vigorously, but in the middle of the stream, where the water ran deeper, the end of the pole found the smooth surface of a flat stone; as she threw her weight downward, the pole slipped, the punt shot ahead, and the next instant she was struggling in the water.
Giles was in the stream at almost the same instant. Virginia could swim a few strokes, enough to keep her afloat until Giles reached her; the danger lay in the obstruction to which the current was rapidly bearing her, the old, dilapidated, deep-water weir; a sort of fence built out into the stream and constructed of a framework of stakes joined by rough planks, the whole woven together by a thatch of brush. It had been built originally as a fish trap, the design being to lead the fish into a pen built upon the principle of a flytrap, but it had long before fallen into decay, until all that remained were the stakes and a framework of water-logged planking. As the river was swollen the upper stringpiece was just awash, and it was impossible to tell what might be underneath; along this upper barrier there was caught a mass of driftwood—broken limbs, with fragments of the original brushwood filling and other detritus.
After her first plunge Virginia floated easily, the air in the folds of her dress buoying her up so that she had no difficulty in keeping her head above the water. When Giles reached her they were not more than thirty yards above the weir, toward which they were being borne with all of the force of a swift current; and as Giles looked ahead and saw the black water swirling into the mass of débris, a chill, not of the river, which was cold enough, struck deeply at his heart.
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