e white tug careered out into the middle of the river. The red floats
of her paddle-wheels revolving with mad rapidity tore up the whole reach
into foam. The Diana in mid-stream waltzed round with as much grace
as an old barn, and flew after her ravisher. Through the ragged fog of
smoke driving headlong upon the water I had a glimpse of Falk's square
motionless shoulders under a white hat as big as a cart-wheel, of his
red face, his yellow staring eyes, his great beard. Instead of keeping
a lookout ahead, he was deliberately turning his back on the river to
glare at his tow. The tall heavy craft, never so used before in her
life, seemed to have lost her senses; she took a wild sheer against her
helm, and for a moment came straight at us, menacing and clumsy, like
a runaway mountain. She piled up a streaming, hissing, boiling wave
half-way up her blunt stem, my crew let out one great howl,--and then we
held our breaths. It was a near thing. But Falk had her! He had her in
his clutch. I fancied I could hear the steel hawser ping as it surged
across the Diana's forecastle, with the hands on board of her bolting
away from it in all directions. It was a near thing. Hermann, with his
hair rumpled, in a snuffy flannel shirt and a pair of mustard-coloured
trousers, had rushed to help with the wheel. I saw his terrified round
face; I saw his very teeth uncovered by a sort of ghastly fixed grin;
and in a great leaping tumult of water between the two ships the Diana
whisked past so close that I could have flung a hair-brush at his head,
for, it seems, I had kept them in my hands all the time. Meanwhile
Mrs. Hermann sat placidly on the skylight, with a woollen shawl on
her shoulders. The excellent woman in response to my indignant
gesticulations fluttered a handkerchief, nodding and smiling in the
kindest way imaginable. The boys, only half-dressed, were jumping about
the poop in great glee, displaying their gaudy braces; and Lena in a
short scarlet petticoat, with peaked elbows and thin bare arms, nursed
the rag-doll with devotion. The whole family passed before my sight as
if dragged across a scene of unparalleled violence. The last I saw was
Hermann's niece with the baby Hermann in her arms standing apart from
the others. Magnificent in her close-fitting print frock she displayed
something so commanding in the manifest perfection of her figure that
the sun seemed to be rising for her alone. The flood of light brought
out the opule