His voice leaped back to us above the tumult of the wind: "Gurd and me'll come home together!"
There was a lull in the gale; the five were put off from the sinking craft in Gurdon's boat.
And the men were standing with ropes on the shore; but I only saw, as the tempest moaned, to swell again, one figure on a bending mast, between sea and sky, and one in a frail shell toiling toward him.
The tempest fell and smote. Then did nothing seem to me fated underneath those awful heavens, but grand and free; freest, mightiest of all that figure imprisoned between storm and cloud, overwhelmed, buried——triumphant, imperishable! Then did the dead that I had known come forth and walk upon the waves before me: and I beheld that they were not dead, but glorious and strong—that, rather, I was dead.
Then all seemed black about me. I would have clutched at somewhat, but I felt a cold hand grasp mine in appealing agony. They brought in with ropes through the breakers the five men who had neared the shore in the young sailor's new fishing-boat.
But the "Twin Brothers," the sublime figure on the mast, the toiling figure in the boat, had "gone home together!"
XVI
THE POPLAR LEAVES TREMBLE
It was Vesty's hand that had wrung mine. Captain Rafe, after he lost his sons, hardly spoke without drawing his own trembling hand along his piteous face.