Page:C Q, or, In the Wireless House (Train, 1912).djvu/97

 edge of the abyss, below which the white foam churned itself into fantastic shapes, now looking like a white patchwork quilt with green squares floating quietly for a moment upon the surface, then parting asunder with a roar a some unseen force sucked it down below into a black hole amid a cataract of spouting waves. There had always been a fascination for Micky in the boiling caldron of blue-green water, and Cloud must have felt it too, for he rested his hands on the rail and gazed steadfastly into its swirling depths. Should a man jump, there was no doubt as to what would occur when he entered that gyrating vortex. Down he would be drawn down, down, in that transparent column of green and white, helpless and immovable in the mighty suction that would whirl him pitilessly round and round, this way and that, until, like a shark shooting towards its victim, would sweep the huge propeller, slicing him in two or beheading him and tossing his dismembered body aside here and there, to spin and dive in its wake until it freed itself from the back current and floated to the surface a mile or more behind, to bob face upward in the moonlight to the surface, where, with