It was Alderling calling out through his window, and then a cry came from over the water, which seemed to answer him, but which there is no reason in the world to believe was not a girlish shout from one of the yachts, swallowed up in the fog.
His lunging descent of the successive stairways followed, and he burst through the doorway beside me, and without heeding me, ran bareheaded down the sloping lawn.
I followed, with what notion of help or hinderance I should not find it easy to say, but before I reached the water’s edge--in fact I never did reach it, and had some difficulty making my way back to the house,--I heard the rapid throb of the oars in the row-locks as he pulled through the white opacity.
You know the rest, for it was the common property of our enterprising press at the time, when the incident was fully reported, with my ineffectual efforts to be satisfactorily interviewed as to the nothing I knew.
The oarless boat was found floating far out to sea after the fog lifted. It was useless to look for Alderling’s body, and I do not know that any search was made for it.