And broken is Love’s fairy lute.
I hear its notes no more.”
For an instant, that seemed the length of eternity, Jess stood on the bank, watching, with strained eyes, the spot where the boat and its occupant had gone down to death among the treacherous lilies that floated to and fro on the bosom of the waters.
In all the after years of her life she could never fully explain just how it was accomplished. The girl was only conscious of seizing a little skiff that floated idly near at hand, and rowing for dear life to the scene of the catastrophe. She was indifferent to the awful danger, though she had just witnessed a cruel example of it. Her one thought was to seek death in the same spot where the victim of her foolish caprice had gone down to his untimely fate.
In that moment her athletic powers stood the girl in good stead, for the arms that wielded the oars were like steel, which told in the powerful strokes with which she sent the little skiff fairly flying over the placid water.
In less time than it takes to describe it, Jess had reached the spot; but her weight was too slight to capsize the boat, though she could feel it being drawn down—down—down.
She reached out and grasped the lilies, and as she did so, the boat disappeared, and she was left struggling in the water, with apparently the same fate which her hapless companion met awaiting her.
And as she realized this, she realized also that her hands were grasping something else beside the slimy stems of the lilies. One glance, and the heart in her bosom seemed to fairly leap with wild exultation and joy. Her fingers were clutching tightly the hand of the man whom she had told herself that she would rescue, or she would meet the same fate which had befallen him.
By the strange ministration of Providence, in reaching out for the lilies, he had fallen among them, and the thick network of stems had borne him up, despite the underground springs which would have carried him down had he not fallen in just the spot where fate had placed him.
He had not lost consciousness, but was struggling with might and main to keep his head above water.