"Here's the Mishteer!" said somebody, and Hugh was hastily making his way through the buffeting wind and spray.
"Come out, Will," he cried; "I will go." And laying hold of the boat, he prepared to leap in, but was pushed back by Ivor.
"Not thee, Hugh. Will and I are enough to risk our lives on yon boiling pot. Hast seen the woman?"
"Yes," said Hugh—"that mad Gwen in her grey shawl." And he still kept his hand on the boat. "Let me be, lad—I am not going to let thee go alone."
"Back!" shouted Ivor, endeavouring to spring past Hugh, who clutched at him and struggled to leap in. There was a moment's wrestling between the two men, each heated by his own passionate will and the new-born spirit of antagonism between them, until at length, "Remember thy wife!" cried Ivor; "I have no one to leave behind—back, man!" And with a violent thrust, he flung Hugh splashing prone in the shallow tide, and, springing into the boat, he pushed it from the shore, while Hugh rose angrily from his undignified position.
"Fool!" he cried, looking at the receding boat; "he will be drowned, as sure as he's there!"
"That's what he knows, Mishteer," cried a man in the crowd. "That's why he won't let you go with him. Tan i marw! I think you must both be tired of your lives!"
"As for me," said another, "I should say if Gwen put herself into that pickle, let her come out of it!"
"Why, man," said a third, "how can she get out of it? That wild sea before her, and a straight rock as smooth as a wall behind her!"
"Twt, twt!" said the first speaker, "Peggi Shân would come and help her! There he goes round the point, now he will be in the strame of the storm! Poor fellow—druan bâch!"