Skelton and Sylvia both rose at the same moment. The rain had turned to hail; the storm that had been gathering all the afternoon at last burst upon them. In half a moment Sylvia’s white dress was drenched. As they stood at the entrance to the arbour, Skelton, with his arm around her, about to make a dash for the house, turned and glanced over his shoulder towards the river, and there, in the black and angry water, storm-tossed and lashed by the wind, a boat was floating bottom upwards. There had evidently not been time to take the sail down, and every minute it would disappear under the seething waves and then come up again--and clinging to the bottom of the boat was a drenched boyish figure that both Skelton and Sylvia recognised in a moment. It was Lewis Pryor. His hat was gone, and his jacket too; he was holding on desperately to the bottom of the boat, and the hurricane was driving the cockleshell down the river at a furious rate. Skelton uttered an exclamation like a groan and pointed to the boat. “See!” he cried, “he can scarcely hold on--he has probably been hurt. Go, dearest, go at once to the house; I must go to the boy.” There was a boat at the wharf, and the negroes, who had collected on the shore and were shrieking and running about wildly, were foolishly trying to raise the sail. In that one quick moment of parting, as Skelton’s eyes fell upon Sylvia’s, he saw in them an agony of apprehension for him. It was no safe matter to venture out in the violence of a northwest storm in the shallow pleasure boat that lay tossing at the wharf, with the negroes vainly and excitedly toiling at the sail, which the wind beat out of their strong hands like a whip. But Sylvia did not ask him to stay. Skelton pressed her once to his heart; he felt gratitude to her that she did not strive uselessly to detain him. He ran to the water’s edge, and just as he reached it the sail, which had been got up, ripped in two with a loud noise, and the mast snapped short off. The rope, though, that held the boat to the wharf did not give way, and a dozen stalwart negroes held on to it. Meanwhile, Lewis’s boat, that had been dimly visible through the hail and the mist, disappeared. The negroes uttered a loud shriek, which was echoed from the Deerchase shore by the crowd assembled there. Skelton’s wildly beating heart stood still, but in the next minute the boat reappeared some distance farther down the river. Lewis had slightly changed his position. He still hung on manfully, but he was not in as good a place as before. The sail, which still held, acted as a drag, so that the progress of the boat, although terribly swept and tossed about, was not very rapid.