splashing on the snow, had laid bare the
green and slimy moss. Two or three volunteers stumbled down the steps,
and the first boat got away, swinging down-stream at once, only to be
brought slowly back, head to wind. She hung motionless a few yards
from the quay, each dip of the oars stirring the water into a whirl of
phosphorescence, and then forged slowly ahead.

Septimus Marvin was not alone, but was accompanied by a bulky man, not
unknown in Farlingford--John Turner, of Ipswich, understood to live
"foreign," but to return, after the manner of East Anglians, when
occasion offered. The rector was in oilskins and sou'wester, like any
one else, and the gleam of his spectacles under the snowy brim of his
headgear seemed to strike no one as incongruous. His pockets bulged
with bottles and bandages. Under his arm he carried a couple of blanket
horse-cloths, useful for carrying the injured or the dead.

"The Curlo--the Inner Curlo--yes, yes!" he shouted in response to
information volunteered on all sides. "Poor fellows! The Inner Curlo,
dear, dear!"

And he groped his way down the steps, into the first boat he saw, with a
simple haste. John Turner followed him. He had tied a silk handkerchief
over his soft felt hat and under his chin.

"No, no!" he said, as Septimus Marvin made room for him on the
after-thwart. "I'm too heavy for a passenger. Put my weight on an oar,"
and he clambered forward to a vacant thwart.

"Mind you come back for us, River Andrew!" cried little Sep's thin
voice, as the boat swirled down stream. His wavering bull's-eye lantern
followed it, and showed River Andrew and another pulling stroke to John
Turner's bow, for the banker had been a famous oar on the Orwell in his
boyhood. Then, with a smack like a box on the ear, another snow-squall
swept in from the sea, and forced all on the quay to turn their backs
and crouch. Many went back to their homes, knowing that nothing could
be known for some hours. Others crouched on the landward side of an old
coal-shed, peeping round the corner.

Miriam and Sep, and a few others, waited on the quay until River Andrew
or another should return. It was an understood thing that the helpers,
such as could man a boat or carry a drowned man, should go first. In
a few minutes the squall was past, and by the light of the moon, now
thinly covered by clouds, the black forms of the first to reach the
other shore could be seen straggling across the marsh toward the great