But they passed it, inch by inch, and the broad bend welcomed
them from above, and only a rocky buttress of implacable hate, around
whose base howled the tides of an equal hate, stood between. Then La
Bijou leaped and throbbed and shook again, and the current slid out
from under, and they remained ever in one place. _Dip and lift, dip
and lift_, through an infinity of time and torture and travail, till
even the line dimmed and faded and the struggle lost its meaning.
Their souls became merged in the rhythm of the toil. Ever lifting,
ever falling, they seemed to have become great pendulums of time. And
before and behind glimmered the eternities, and between the eternities,
ever lifting, ever falling, they pulsed in vast rhythmical movement.
They were no longer humans, but rhythms. They surged in till their
paddles touched the bitter rock, but they did not know; surged out,
where chance piloted them unscathed through the lashing ice, but they
did not see. Nor did they feel the shock of the smitten waves, nor the
driving spray that cooled their faces. . .
La Bijou veered out into the stream, and their paddles, flashing
mechanically in the sunshine, held her to the return angle across the
river. As time and matter came back to them, and Split-up Island
dawned upon their eyes like the foreshore of a new world, they settled
down to the long easy stroke wherein breath and strength may be
recovered.
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