At the wharf it took a moment or two to clear away the broken mast and the rags of the sail. Two oars were in the bottom of the boat. As Skelton was about to spring into it he turned, and saw Sylvia standing on the edge of the wharf, her hands clasped, her hair half down and beaten about her pale face by the fierce gust, her white dress soaked with the rain. She had followed him involuntarily. In the excitement, and in his fierce anxiety for Lewis, Skelton had not until that moment thought of the danger to himself. But one look into Sylvia’s face showed him that she remembered it might be the last time on this earth that they would look into each other’s eyes. And in an instant, in the twinkling of an eye, Skelton’s passion for Lewis took its proper proportion--he loved Sylvia infinitely best at that moment. As if Fate would punish him for ever letting the boy’s claim interfere with the woman’s, he was called upon to take his life in his hand--that life that she had so beautifully transformed for that boy’s sake. And as Sylvia stood, in the rain and wind, Skelton holding her cold hands and looking at her with a desperate affection, some knowledge came from his soul to hers that at last she was supreme. Skelton himself felt that, when he set out upon that storm-swept river, he would indeed be setting out upon another river that led to a shoreless sea. This new, sweet life was saying to him, “Hail and farewell!” They had not stood thus for more than a minute, but it seemed a lifetime to both. When it dawned upon Sylvia that nothing short of Lewis’s cry for life could draw Skelton from her, a smile like moonlight passed over her pallid face. She had the same presentiment that Skelton had--he would never return alive. It was as if they heard together the solemn tolling of the bell that marked the passing of their happiness. But not even death itself could rob Sylvia of that one perfect moment. Then, out of the roar of the storm came a cry from Lewis. Skelton raised Sylvia’s hands and let them drop again. Neither spoke a word, and the next moment he was in the boat, that both wind and tide seized and drove down the river like an eggshell. Skelton had two oars, but they did him little good. He could not direct the boat at all; the wind that was blowing all the water out of the river blew him straight down towards Lone Point. He felt sure that he was following Lewis, and no doubt gaining on him, as he had no wet sail dragging after him, but the darkness had now descended. It was not more than seven o’clock, but it might have been midnight. Suddenly a terrific squall burst roaring upon the storm already raging. Skelton could hear the hurricane screaming before it struck him. He turned cold and faint when he thought about the boy clinging to the boat in the darkness. He was still trying to use his oars when the squall struck him. One oar was wrenched out of his hand as if it had been a straw, the other one broke in half.