But Grey hooked the fishing-boat to the wherry with his foot, and, brandishing the oar aloft, whirled it over the head of the cowering man, and shouted out in a voice that crossed the waters and crept up the hushed shores: "Damn you, man, don't you see I mean to brain you if you won't speak?"
"She was not saved. No one on the after-deck or in the saloon was saved. It was the boilers blew up, and all aft were killed or drowned."
Grey unhooked his foot from the fishing-boat, and with his foot pushed off from her. Then throwing down the oar in the boat, he folded his arms tightly across his chest, and, still standing, drifted down the river, his large figure standing out in black against the fading purple of the west, his face turned towards the blackening east.
"Only that he lost his reason with his wife," said the fisherman, "I'd take the law of him."
"Ay," answered another man in the boat, "it's an excuse for a man to do any wild thing to lose his wife like this."
They had drifted a bit, and were now pulling back towards the spot where they had first hailed Grey.
"He's standing up still in that wherry. With a big man like him standing up in a cockleshell of a craft like that, the swell of a steamboat wouldn't think much of twisting her from under his feet," said the first speaker.
"And maybe he wouldn't much mind if it did, poor gentleman," in kindly tone, said the man whom Grey had threatened.
The wherry drifted on, but for a time Grey never altered his position. He was without his coat, without his hat; his white sleeves were rolled up above the elbows, and his powerful arms tightened across his wide chest. Gradually the boat, as it drifted, swung round, and brought his face to the fading east.
There was not a ripple on the river, not a murmur in the trees; a faint thin rustle of the water where it touched the shore was the only sound. Night was coming, with its healing dew and spacious silence for universal sleep.