At the same instant
she saw them, and redoubled her efforts to reach the opposite shore
before they should overtake her. Two minutes' start of them was
all Meriem cared for. Once in the trees she knew that she could
outdistance and elude them. Her hopes were high--they could not
overtake her now--she had had too good a start of them.
Malbihn, urging his men onward with a stream of hideous oaths and
blows from his fists, realized that the girl was again slipping from
his clutches. The leading canoe, in the bow of which he stood,
was yet a hundred yards behind the fleeing Meriem when she ran the
point of her craft beneath the overhanging trees on the shore of
safety.
Malbihn screamed to her to halt. He seemed to have gone mad with
rage at the realization that he could not overtake her, and then
he threw his rifle to his shoulder, aimed carefully at the slim
figure scrambling into the trees, and fired.
Malbihn was an excellent shot. His misses at so short a distance
were practically non-existent, nor would he have missed this time
but for an accident occurring at the very instant that his finger
tightened upon the trigger--an accident to which Meriem owed her
life--the providential presence of a water-logged tree trunk, one
end of which was embedded in the mud of the river bottom and the
other end of which floated just beneath the surface where the prow
of Malbihn's canoe ran upon it as he fired.
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