"That was my impression," returned his host. "Beg pardon, Avery. You see—to be honest, I can't say exactly how we 're coming out of this. There are several things which might happen. I thought"—the sportsman stammered, and stopped.
"If you should pull through and I should n't," said Avery, lifting a gray face,—"I 'm not a swimmer, and you are,—tell her I 'd give my immortal soul if I had n't left her. Tell her—I—God! Romer, she was very sick! She did n't want me to go."
"I 've always thought," said the bachelor, "that if I had a wife—a woman like that"— His face hardened perceptibly, dripping under his sou'wester. "You fellows don't know what you 've got," he added abruptly. He scrambled up the companionway without looking back. Avery followed him abjectly.
At this moment the yacht groaned, grated, and keeled suddenly. Water poured over the rail. The deck rang with cries. Avery got up, and held on to something. It proved to be the main-sheet. It ran through his fingers like a saw, and escaped. Confusedly he heard the mate crying:—
"We 've struck, sir! She 's stove in!"
"Well," replied the owner coolly, "get the boats over, then."
He did not look at his guest. Avery looked at the water. It seemed to leap up after him, hike a beast amused with a ghastly play. Oddly, he recalled at that moment coming in one day—it was after she knew what ailed her—and finding Jean with a book face down on her lap. He picked it up and read, "The vision of sudden death." He had laughed at her, and scolded her for filling her mind with such things.
"You don't quite understand, dear," she had answered.
"Come," said Romer, whose remarkable self-possession somehow increased rather than diminished Avery's alarm, "we have n't as much time to spare as I would like. Hold hard there while Mr. Avery gets aboard!"
The tender was prancing like a mustang on a prairie, for there was really a swamping sea. The landsman was clumsy and nervous, missed his footing, and fell.