No longer crying out; she cannot; her throat is filled with the water of the turbid stream. It stifles, as if a noose were being drawn around her neck, tighter and tighter. She can neither speak nor shout, only plunge and struggle.
Fortunately, while falling, the skirt of her dress, spreading as a parachute, lessened the velocity of the descent. This still extended, hinders her from sinking. As she knows not how to swim, it will not sustain her long; itself becoming weighted with the water.
Her wild shriek, with that of her sister responding—the latter still continued in terrified repetition—has summoned the passengers from the saloon, a crowd collecting on the stern-guards.
“Some one overboard!” is the cry sent all over the vessel.
It reaches the ear of the pilot; who instantly rings the stop-bell, causing the paddles to suspend revolution, and bringing the boat to an almost instantaneous stop. The strong current, against which they are contending, makes the movement easy of execution.
The shout of, “some one overboard!” is quickly followed by another of more particular significance. “It’s a lady!”
This announcement intensifies the feeling of regret and alarm. Nowhere in the world more likely to do so, than among the chivalric spirits sure to be passengers on a Mississippian steamboat. Half a dozen voices are heard simultaneously asking, not “who is the lady?” but “where?” while several are seen pulling off their coats, as if preparing to take to the water.
Foremost among them is the young Creole, Dupré. He knows who the lady is. Another lady has met him frantically, exclaiming—
“’Tis Helen! She has fallen, or leaped overboard.”
The ambiguity of expression appears strange; indeed incomprehensible, to Dupré, as to others who overhear it. They attributed it to incoherence, arising from the shock of the unexpected catastrophe.