“See!� he cried, “he can scarcely hold on—he has probably been hurt. Go, dearest, go at once to the house; I must go to the boy.�
There was a boat at the wharf, and the negroes, who had collected on the shore and were shrieking and running about wildly, were foolishly trying to raise the sail. In that one quick moment of parting, as Skelton’s eyes fell upon Sylvia’s, he saw in them an agony of apprehension for him. It was no safe matter to venture out in the violence of a northwest storm in the shallow pleasure boat that lay tossing at the wharf, with the negroes vainly and excitedly toiling at the sail, which the wind beat out of their strong hands like a whip. But Sylvia did not ask him to stay. Skelton pressed her once to his heart; he felt gratitude to her that she did not strive uselessly to detain him. He ran to the water’s edge, and just as he reached it the sail, which had been got up, ripped in two with a loud noise, and the mast snapped short off. The rope, though, that held the boat to the wharf did not give way, and a dozen stalwart negroes held on to it.
Meanwhile, Lewis’s boat, that had been dimly visible through the hail and the mist, disappeared. The negroes uttered a loud shriek, which was echoed from the Deerchase shore by the crowd assembled there. Skelton’s wildly beating heart stood still, but in the next minute the boat reappeared some distance farther down the river. Lewis had slightly changed his position. He still hung on manfully, but he was not in as good a place as before. The sail, which still held, acted as a drag, so that the progress of the boat, although terribly swept and tossed about, was not very rapid.
At the wharf it took a moment or two to clear away the broken mast and the rags of the sail. Two oars were in the bottom of the boat. As Skelton was about to spring into it he turned, and saw Sylvia standing on the edge of the wharf, her hands clasped, her hair half down and beaten about her pale face by the fierce gust, her white dress soaked with the rain. She had followed him involuntarily. In the excitement, and in his fierce anxiety for Lewis, Skelton had not until that moment thought of the danger to himself. But one look into Sylvia’s face showed him that she remembered it might be the last time on this earth that they would look into each other’s eyes. And in an instant, in the twinkling of an eye, Skelton’s passion for Lewis took its proper proportion—he loved Sylvia infinitely best at that moment. As if Fate would punish him for ever letting the boy’s claim interfere with the woman’s, he was called upon to take his life in his hand—that life that she had so beautifully transformed for that boy’s sake.
And as Sylvia stood, in the rain and wind, Skelton holding her cold hands and looking at her with a desperate affection, some knowledge came from his soul to hers that at last she was supreme. Skelton himself felt that, when he set out upon that storm-swept river, he would indeed be setting out upon another river that led to a shoreless sea. This new, sweet life was saying to him, “Hail and farewell!�
They had not stood thus for more than a minute, but it seemed a lifetime to both. When it dawned upon Sylvia that nothing short of Lewis’s cry for life could draw Skelton from her, a smile like moonlight passed over her pallid face. She had the same presentiment that Skelton had—he would never return alive. It was as if they heard together the solemn tolling of the bell that marked the passing of their happiness. But not even death itself could rob Sylvia of that one perfect moment. Then, out of the roar of the storm came a cry from Lewis. Skelton raised Sylvia’s hands and let them drop again. Neither spoke a word, and the next moment he was in the boat, that both wind and tide seized and drove down the river like an eggshell.
Skelton had two oars, but they did him little good. He could not direct the boat at all; the wind that was blowing all the water out of the river blew him straight down towards Lone Point. He felt sure that he was following Lewis, and no doubt gaining on him, as he had no wet sail dragging after him, but the darkness had now descended. It was not more than seven o’clock, but it might have been midnight.
Suddenly a terrific squall burst roaring upon the storm already raging. Skelton could hear the hurricane screaming before it struck him. He turned cold and faint when he thought about the boy clinging to the boat in the darkness. He was still trying to use his oars when the squall struck him. One oar was wrenched out of his hand as if it had been a straw, the other one broke in half.
At that Skelton quietly dropped his arms, and a strange composure succeeded his agony of fear and apprehension about Lewis. He could now do nothing more for Lewis, and nothing for himself. He was athletic, although neither tall nor stout; but he did not have Lewis’s young litheness, and he was already much exhausted. There would be no clinging for hours to the bottom of the boat for him, and he was no swimmer; he would make a fight for his life, but he felt it would be of no avail. And Sylvia! As he recalled her last look upon him, he beat his forehead against the side of the boat like a madman; but the momentary wildness departed as quickly as it came. The recollection that he was on the threshold of another world calmed him with the awful majesty of the thought. He said to himself, “Sylvia understands—and she will never forget!� All sorts of strange ideas came crowding upon him in the darkness. All around him was a world of black and seething waters and shrieking winds. Could this be that blue and placid river upon which so much of his boyhood had been spent? Almost the first thing he remembered was standing at the windows of his nursery, when he was scarcely more than a baby, watching the dimpling shadows on the water, and wondering if it were deep enough to drown a very little boy. And he had lived in his boat as a boy, just as Lewis did. Then he remembered the September afternoon, so long ago, when he had taken Sylvia in his boat, and that night just such a terrible storm had come up as this; the bridge had been washed away, and the tide had overflowed all the flower beds at Deerchase and had come almost up to the hall door. He remembered the morning after, when he left Deerchase—the river, as far as eye could reach, a gigantic lagoon, muddy and turbulent. Would it look like that the next morning? and would a person drowned that night be found within a few hours? He did not remember ever to have heard of a single person being drowned in that river, and could not think whether the body would be washed ashore or would sink for days.
Ah, how sweet had existence become! and in one day he had compassed the happiness of a lifetime. It was only a few hours ago that Lewis was sailing past Deerchase so gaily, and Sylvia’s soft hair had been so lately blown in his face by summer breezes. Presently in the midst of the darkness and the wildness he again heard a cry; he recognised Lewis’s voice, faint as it was, and almost drowned by the clamour of the winds and the waves. Skelton then felt a presentiment that Lewis would be saved, although he himself would undoubtedly be lost. And then came the feeling that the mystery of life was to be solved. No matter now about all his thoughts, all his speculations; in one moment he would know more than all the world could teach him about those vast mysteries that subtle men try to fathom. Skelton was too sincere a man and too fearless to change wholly within the few awful moments of suspension between two worlds. One was gone from him already, the other was close at hand. But he had always firmly believed in a Great First Cause, a Supreme Being. This belief took on strangely the likeness of the Christian God, the Father, Friend, the Maker who orders things wisely for His creatures. Instinctively he remembered the proverb of the poor peasants: