Lorimer of the Northwest by Harold Bindloss

It was James Lawrence, the English rancher, and Miss Carrington who told me what happened to those we left behind after the fateful moment when the canoe first slipped clear of the shingle bank. Lawrence accompanied the party on their return journey, and it was he who suggested sending Grace and Miss Carrington across in the canoe. The river ran high that morning, and he felt dubious about the ford, because several pack-horses had already been drowned there.

The first intimation he had of anything wrong was a cry from the girl, and he saw a strip of water widen between the canoe and the bank. He ran his hardest, but made little headway, for thorny bushes and fern formed thickets along the bank, while when he reached the boulders he felt that he had come too late, because no swimmer could then overtake the canoe, even if he escaped destruction in the first rapid immediately below. Nevertheless, after a glance at the drawn face of the girl, which haunted him long afterward, as with the first shock of terror on her she labored helplessly at the paddle, he would even have made the hopeless attempt but that Colonel Carrington, who of all the trio had retained his common sense, intervened. It was not without reason that the Colonel had earned the reputation of being a hard man.