ng sky.

"Is it going to rain?" I asked.

He stood at the rudder, feet apart and shoulders full of muscle and full
of grace, the handkerchief around his neck a line of flame between blue
clothes and olive face. A lock of bronze hair blew boyishly across his
forehead.

"Worse than that," he said, and his eyes were keen as he stared at the
uneven water in front of us. A basin of smoother water and the yellow
tongue of a sand-beach lay beyond it at the foot of a line of high
rocks. "The passage is there"--he nodded. "If I can make it before the
squall catches us"--he glanced up again and then turned to Sally. "Could
you sail her a moment while I see to the sheet? Keep her just so." His
hand placed Sally's with a sort of roughness on the rudder. "Are you
afraid?" He paused a second to ask it.

"Not a bit," said the girl, smiling up at him cheerfully, and then he
was working away, and the little Revenge was flying, ripping the waves,
every breath nearer by yards to that tumbling patch of wolf-gray water.

As I said, I know less about a boat than a boy of five. I can never
remember what the parts of it are called and it is a wonder to me how
they can make it go more than one way. So I cannot tell in any
intelligent manner what happened. But, as it seemed, suddenly, while I
watched Sally standing steadily with both her little hands holding the
rudder, there was a crack as if the earth had split, then, with a
confused rushing and tearing, a mass of something fell with a long-drawn
crash, and as I stared, paralyzed, I saw the mast strike against the
girl as she stood, her hands still firmly on the rudder, and saw her go
down without a sound. There were two or three minutes of which I
remember nothing but the roaring of water. I think I must have been
caught under the sail, for the next I knew I was struggling from beneath
its stiff whiteness, and as I looked about, dazed, behold! we had passed
the reefs and lay rocking quietly. I saw that first, and then I saw
Cary's head as it bent over something he held in his arms--and it was
Sally! I tried to call, I tried to reach them, but the breath must have
been battered out of me, for I could not, and Cary did not notice me. I
think he forgot I was on earth. As I gazed at them speechless,
breathless, Sally's eyes opened and smiled up at him, and she turned her
face against his shoulder like a child. Cary's dark cheek went down
against hers, and through the sudden quiet I heard him