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 fabric, so that neither skin nor hair seemed wet. A gorillalike hand closed about her shoulder in a grip which made her scream with pain; the next moment she was lifted bodily from the water and flung across the weir. She grasped a stake and clung to it, looking back with terror; Giles had disappeared.

"Giles!" she gasped. "Save Giles!"

"He has sunk," came the deep-toned answer in a voice which seemed to boom up from the river's bed. "I will get him! Don't fear."

The water closed over the huge black head, with its close, kinky hair; a moment later she caught the flash of Giles's white face as it shone for an instant beneath the surface; beside him there appeared the black one. Giles seemed to rise, did rise, an inert mass, and rolled face downward across the beam to which she clung. How it happened Virginia could not have told, but as she threw her arm about Giles's head she saw that the force which had propelled him lay in a Titan hand which seemed to envelop his whole shoulder and a bulging bar of ebony from which the light serge sleeve was ripped.

"Wait a moment," rumbled the deep voice, "and we will get to the shore." The voice was low and rich, vibrant, resonant, magnetic. It filled the ears in a satisfying way, compelled confidence, utter and absolute. It was un-English in tone and accent, and there was a purring roll to the "r" sounds; the girl noticed this, but her thoughts were for the moment drowned in her senses.

The negro twisted himself about; a great, black, sinewy hand seemed to wrap itself about the head of a stake beside him, the other gripped the slippery edge of the upper beam until the fingers sank deep into its slimy 28