The doomed boat floated almost without movement on the surface of the sea, on which the air, loaded with low clouds, appeared to weigh with an extraordinary heaviness.
D’Etigues and de Bennetot must have been half-way back to the shore. The sound of their flight was no longer heard. At that moment the boat heeled over to starboard; and in a kind of stupor of terror and agony that dazed her, the young woman thought that the end had come. She did not wince; she did not shiver. The acceptance of death produces a state of mind in which one seems already on the other side of the grave.
However she was faintly astonished not to feel the touch of icy water. At the moment it was the thing from which her delicate flesh most shrank. No; the boat was not plunging under. It seemed more likely rather to capsize because somebody had passed a leg over the gunwale. Somebody? But who? The Baron? His confederate?
She learned that it was neither the one nor the other, for a voice which she did not know murmured:
“You can stop being frightened. It’s a friend who has come to rescue you.”
This friend bent over her and without even knowing whether she heard or not, continued:
“You have never seen me ... my name is Ralph ... Ralph d’Andresy.... It’s all right now.... I’ve stopped the hole with a stocking rolled round one of the rowlocks. It’s a make-shift; but it will work all right—especially since we are going to get rid of this great boulder.”
With his knife he cut the ropes which fastened the young woman to the stretcher, cut loose the boulder, and succeeded in heaving it overboard.
Then drawing aside the folds of the rug which enveloped her, he said:
“You can’t think how delighted I am things have turned out so much better than I expected. Here you are, safe! The water has not even had time to reach you. What luck we’ve had! You’re feeling all right?”