hought of his loss,--though loss it
wa'n't,--only of his friend,--of such stunning treachery, that, if
the sun fell hissing into the sea at noon, it would have mattered
less,--only of _that_ loss that tore his heart out with it.

"Gabriel!" he shouted,--"Gabriel!" And his voice was heart-rending. I
know that Mr. Gabriel felt it, for he never turned nor stirred.

Then I don't know what came over Dan: a blind rage swelling in his heart
seemed to make him larger in every limb; he towered like a flame. He
sprang to the tiller, but, as he did so, saw with one flash of his eye
that Mr. Gabriel had unshipped the rudder and thrown it away. He seized
an oar to steer with in its place; he saw that they, in their ignorance
fast edging on the flats, would shortly be aground; more fisherman than
sailor, he knew a thousand tricks of boat-craft that they had never
heard of. We flew, we flew through cloven ridges, we became a wind
ourselves, and while I tell it he was beside them, had gathered himself
as if to leap the chasm between time and eternity, and had landed among
them in the Speed. The wherry careened with the shock and the water
poured into her, and she flung headlong and away as his foot spurned
her. Heaven knows why she didn't upset, for I thought of nothing but the
scene before me as I drifted off from it. I shut the eyes in my soul
now, that I mayn't see that horrid scuffle twice. Mr. Gabriel, he rose,
he turned. If Dan was the giant beside him, he himself was so well-knit,
so supple, so adroit, that his power was like the blade in the hand.
Dan's strength was lying round loose, but Mr. Gabriel's was trained, it
hid like springs of steel between brain and wrist, and from him the clap
fell with the bolt. And then, besides, Dan did not love Faith, and he
did love Gabriel. Any one could see how it would go. I screamed. I
cried, "Faith! Faith!" And some natural instinct stirred in Faith's
heart, for she clung to Mr. Gabriel's arm to pull him off from Dan. But
he shook her away like rain. Then such a mortal weakness took possession
of me that I saw everything black, and, when it was clean gone, I
looked, and they were locked in each other's arms, fierce, fierce and
fell, a death-grip. They were staggering to the boat's edge: only this I
saw, that Mr. Gabriel was inside: suddenly the helmsman interposed with
an oar, and broke their grasps. Mr. Gabriel reeled away, free, for a
second; then, the passion, the fury, the hate in his