e were looking off he had been
hauling it down the steep bank by the cottage.

Now when we saw him Vesty ran to him and put the child in his arms and
clung to him. I saw a great light come over his face.

"Gurd," said his father sternly, the old stained hand still stroking
his white face, "ye have strength and skill above the most--but look at
yon! Put up your boat, lad; it's no use. Moreover, there are five men
yonder on the masts--your boat, tested in an ordinar' sea, holds but
five alone!"

"Will ye go out jest to give them another chance to wrack themselves,
and ye put yerself by to drown?" said another, with a trembling,
half-ferocious laugh. "Look to yer wife and child. Don't be a fool!"

"There 's not one o' ye," cried Gurdon, "but if ye had a boat fit 'u'd
do all ye could, an' men sinkin' and a-wavin' ye like that--let me off!
There 's no other way----"

His voice broke. He looked at his wife and child, a look the woman
understood for all eternity.

Vesty stood like marble; her shawl had escaped from her own throat, but
was warm about the child that Gurdon had placed back on her breast.

As we waited, watching, transfixed, Fluke came running breathless from
the woods where he had been as guide with the party of Notely's
pleasure-seekers who had stayed behind that morning.

Captain Rafe ran to him, with the hand still stroking his pallid face:
"That was Gurdon out there, making so near the sinking boat--he would
go--only five----"

But Fluke heard never a word. He saw; his face flushed with a kind of
mad joy; he tossed his hair back, and leaping into the waves, swam to
his own frail little fishing-boat that was tossing at anchor.

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-