heart feeding his
strength as youth fed the locks of Samson, he darted, and lifted Dan in
his two arms and threw him like a stone into the water. Stiffened to
ice, I waited for Dan to rise; the other craft, the Follow, skimmed
between us, and one man managing her that she shouldn't heel, the rest
drew Dan in,--it's not the depth of two foot there,--tacked about, and
after a minute came along-side, seized our painter, and dropped him
gently into his own boat. Then--for the Speed had got afloat again--the
thing stretched her two sails wing and wing, and went ploughing up a
great furrow of foam before her.

I sprang to Dan. He was not senseless, but in a kind of stupor: his head
had struck the fluke of a half-sunk anchor and it had stunned him, but
as the wound bled he recovered slowly and opened his eyes. Ah, what
misery was in them! I turned to the fugitives. They were yet in sight,
Mr. Gabriel sitting and seeming to adjure Faith, whose skirts he
held; but she stood, and her arms were outstretched, and, pale as a
foam-wreath her face, and piercing as a night-wind her voice, I heard
her cry, "Oh, Georgie! Georgie!" It was too late for her to cry or to
wring her hands now. She should have thought of that before. But Mr.
Gabriel rose and drew her down, and hid her face in his arms and bent
over it; and so they fled up the basin and round the long line of sand,
and out into the gloom and the curdling mists.

I bound up Dan's head. I couldn't steer with an oar,--that was out of
the question,--but, as luck would have it, could row tolerably; so I got
down the little mast, and at length reached the wharves. The town-lights
flickered up in the darkness and flickered back from the black rushing
river, and then out blazed the great mills; and as I felt along, I
remembered times when we'd put in by the tender sunset, as the rose
faded out of the water and the orange ebbed down the west, and one by
one the sweet evening-bells chimed forth, so clear and high, and each
with a different tone, that it seemed as if the stars must flock,
tinkling, into the sky. And here were the bells ringing out again,
ringing out of the gray and the gloom, dull and brazen, as if they rang
from some cavern of shadows, or from the mouth of hell,--but no, _that_
was down-river! Well, I made my way, and the men on the landing took up
Dan, and helped him in and got him on my little bed, and no sooner there
than the heavy sleep with which he had struggled f