hands. The woman let her go, but a man caught her arms from behind.
In her struggles her long hair came loose and blew back into the man's
face, blinding him. Still he grasped her stoutly, though his face was
covered with her thick hair, and her frantic movements dragged him inch
by inch towards the water that he dreaded. Now there was a chair
floating on it ... a little yellow chair that bobbed drolly with the
motion of the bright wavelets. And still people shouted, and ran to and
fro along the edge of the water, like terriers wildly excited over a
flung stick which they are afraid to plunge in and fetch. One or two had
rushed off towards Ghiffa, still shouting and gesticulating. Boats had
put out from the village. The men in the boats shouted and gesticulated
also. When they reached the spot where Chesney had gone down, they
leaned over, gazing into the water. They rowed back and forth, stopping
every now and then to gaze into the water. Suddenly there rose a cry:
"_L'e li! L'e li! Vardel!_" (There he is! See!) But no one went
overboard. It seemed to Sophy that her heart would burst her bosom. She
tried to find some terrible word that would rouse them to manhood. But
even her voice failed her. It was like trying to cry out in a nightmare.
Only a hoarse sound escaped her. Her eyes felt full of blood.

Then suddenly a figure came running, bounding. "_Dove? Dove?_" (Where?
Where?) it called as it pelted down the terrace steps.

It was Peppin, Amaldi's sailor, bare-armed and bare-legged, in blue
singlet and canvas trousers rolled to the knee.

Sophy's haggard blood-shot eyes fixed on the half-naked sailor as though
he had been God.

The little crowd on shore bristled with pointing arms. "Out there! Just
there!" they called in unison.

Sophy tried to cry "Save him!" to Peppin, but her voice only croaked
harshly in her throat.

He did not even hear her. He had thrown his whole seaman's consciousness
ahead into that clear yet impenetrable water. Even as she tried to call
to him, his body, flashing obedience to his thought, shot into the lake
with the curved bound of a dolphin. The water leaped up about him as in
applause. Here at last was a _man_.

"_Bravo, Marinaio! Bravo! Bravo!_" shrieked the craven throng.

Sophy stood still enough now. There was no need to hold her. She stood
as though her soul had gone from her and entered the body of the sailor
who was swimming strong and straight for the point where Cecil had