how the remaining distance seemed very great, as Hope saw them glide
away, leaving her in the water alone, her feet unsupported by any firm
element, the bright and pitiless sky arching far above her, and her head
burning with more heat than she had liked to own. She was conscious of
her full strength, and swam more vigorously than ever; but her head was
hot and her ears rang, and she felt chilly vibrations passing up and
down her sides, that were like, she fancied, the innumerable fringing
oars of the little jelly-fishes she had so often watched. Her body felt
almost unnaturally strong, and she took powerful strokes; but it seemed
as if her heart went out into them and left a vacant cavity within. More
and more her life seemed boiling up into her head; queer fancies came
to her, as, for instance, that she was an inverted thermometer with the
mercury all ascending into a bulb at the top. She shook her head and the
fancy cleared away, and then others came.

She began to grow seriously anxious, but the distance was diminishing;
Harry was almost at the steps with the child, and the boy had rowed his
skiff round the breakwater out of sight; a young fisherman leaned over
the railing with his back to her, watching the lobster-catchers on the
other side. She was almost in; it was only a slight dizziness, yet she
could not see the light-house. Concentrating all her efforts, she shut
her eyes and swam on, her arms still unaccountably vigorous, though the
rest of her body seemed losing itself in languor. The sound in her ear
had grown to a roar, as of many mill-wheels. It seemed a long distance
that she thus swam with her eyes closed. Then she half opened her eyes,
and the breakwater seemed all in motion, with tier above tier of eager
faces looking down on her. In an instant there was a sharp splash close
beside her, and she felt herself grasped and drawn downwards, with a
whirl of something just above her, and then all consciousness went out
as suddenly as when ether brings at last to a patient, after the roaring
and the tumult in his brain, its blessed foretaste of the deliciousness
of death.

When Hope came again to consciousness, she found herself approaching her
own pier in a sail-boat, with several very wet gentlemen around her, and
little Jenny nestled close to her, crying as profusely as if her pretty
scarlet bathing-dress were being wrung out through her eyes. Hope asked
no questions, and hardly felt the impulse to inquir