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 entire; she had felt safe from the moment in which she felt the first strong clutch of his hand; then, as she searched his face in vain for the promise of safety and found none there, it seemed as if she suddenly realized. She tried bravely to smile; her voice came in a sob.

"Giles … kiss me, dear"

He leaned toward her and pressed his wet face to hers; he had always kissed her at parting, but this kiss was different, and seemed to inspire him with a fresh strength; he lifted his voice in a wild, husky-throated cry for help.

There came from the bank a deep-voiced, resonant hail. Tightening his grip upon Virginia, Giles writhed around against the stakes which were cutting into his flesh.

"Dessalines!" he gasped.

Virginia, looking over his shoulder, wondered if her senses were becoming vague. On the farther bank there stood a towering figure who, even as she watched, threw down a fishing rod he held in his hand and rushed to the brink of the steep bank; at a point where it jutted abruptly over the black, swirling water he loomed for an instant against the sky, then his great frame hurtled through the air and struck the stream with a crash which rose above the singing in her ears, and, even at that moment, numbed as her senses were from the chaos of wild impressions, Virginia was startled to see, as he towered above them, that the face of the man was as black as the shadows in the deep pool beneath.

Her next clear consciousness was of a fierce, black, scowling face beside her own and a mass of sooty, kinky hair from which the water dripped as from an oiled 27