Page:Vance--The trey o hearts.djvu/53

Rh, bare of underbrush, and sparsely sown with small cedars.

The shelving moss-beds afforded uncertain footing, and the scanty cedar growth but small support. Alan came at headlong pace within sight of the eaves of a cliff, and precisely then the hillside seemed to slip from under him. His heels flourished in the air, his back thumped a bed of pebbles. He began to slide, grasped a puny little cedar which came away in his hand, and amid a shower of stones shot over the edge and down a drop of more than thirty feet. He was aware of the sun, a molten ball wheeling madly in the sky. Then dark waters closed over him.

He came up gasping, and struck out for something dark that rode the waters near at hand—a canoe. But his strength was spent. Within a stroke of an outstretched paddle he flung up a hand and went down.

Instantly one occupant of the canoe, a young and very beautiful woman in a man's hunting clothes, spoke a word of command, and, as her guide steadied the vessel with his paddle, rose carefully in her place and curved her lithe body over the bows, headforemost into the pool.