"If you could—"
"I want," said Hagar, "more time. Will you let it all rest for a little longer? I don't think I could tell you truly to-day."
"As long as you wish," he said, "if only, in the end—"
Two days after this they went out in the afternoon in the boat. It had been a warm day, with murk in the air. At the little landing-place Fay, after a glance at the dim, hot arch of the sky, asked the boatman if bad weather might be brewing. But the Breton was positive.
"Nothing to-day—nothing to-day! To-morrow, perhaps, m'sieu."
They went sailing far out, until the land sunk from sight. An hour or two passed, pleasantly, pleasantly. Then suddenly the wind, where they were, dropped like a stone. They lay for an hour with flapping sail and watched the blue sky grow pallid and then darken. A puff of wind, hot and heavy, lifted the hair from their brows. It increased; the sky darkened yet more; with an appalling might and swiftness the worst storm of the half-year burst upon them. The wind blew a hurricane; the sea rose; suddenly the mast went. Fay and the Breton battled with the wreckage, cut it loose—the boat righted. But she had shipped water and her timbers were straining and creaking. The wind was whipping her away to the open sea, and the waves, continually mounting, battered her side. There was a perceptible list. Night was oncoming, and the fury above increasing.
Hagar braided her long hair that the wind had loosened from its fastening. "We are in danger," she said to Fay.
"Yes. Can you swim?"
"Yes. But there would be no long swimming in this sea."
They sat in the darkness of the storm. When the lightnings flashed each had a vision of the other's face, tense and still. There was nothing that could be done. The sailor, who was hardy enough, now muttered prayers and now objurgations upon the faithless weather. He tried to assure his passengers that not St. Anne herself could have foreseen what was going to occur that afternoon. Certainly Jean Gouillou had not. "That's understood," said Hagar, smiling at him in a flash of lightning; and, "Just do your best now," said Fay.