e rush of the hail, they heard him
give a sharp order to Jean, who must have had some knowledge of the sea,
for he obeyed at once, and the boat, set free, lurched forward with a
flap of her sail, which was like the report of a cannon. For a moment,
all seemed confusion and flapping chaos, then came a sense of tenseness,
and the boat heeled over with a swish, which added a hundred-weight of
solid water to the beating of the hail on the spare sail, beneath which
the women crouched.

"What? Did you speak?" shouted Loo, putting his face close to the
canvas.

"It is only Marie calling on the saints," was the answer, in Juliette's
laughing voice.

In a few minutes it was over; and, even at the back of the winds, could
be heard the retreat of the hail as it crashed onward toward the valleys
of which every slope is a named vineyard, to beat down in a few wild
moments the result of careful toil and far-sighted expenditure; to wipe
out that which is unique, which no man can replace--the vintage of a
year.

When the hail ceased beating on it, Juliette pushed back the soaked
canvas, which had covered them like a roof, and lifted her face to
the cooler air. The boat was rushing through the water, and close to
Juliette's cheek, just above the gunwale, rose a curved wave, green and
white, and all shimmering with phosphorescence, which seemed to hover
like a hawk above its prey.

The aftermath of the storm was flying overhead in riven ribbons of
cloud, through which the stars were already peeping. To the westward the
sky was clear, and against the last faint glow of the departed sun the
lightning ran hither and thither, skipping and leaping, without sound or
cessation, like fairies dancing.

Immediately overhead, the sail creaked and tugged at its earings, while
the wind sang its high clear song round mast and halliards.

Juliette turned to look at Barebone. He was standing, ankle deep, in
water, leaning backward to windward, in order to give the boat every
pound of weight he could. The lambent summer-lightning on the western
horizon illuminated his face fitfully. In that moment Juliette saw what
is given to few to see and realise--though sailors, perforce, lie down
to sleep knowing it every night--that under Heaven her life was wholly
and solely in the two hands of a fellow-being. She knew it, and saw that
Barebone knew it, though he never glanced at her. She saw the whites of
his eyes gleaming as he looked up, from moment to