At that Skelton quietly dropped his arms, and a strange composure succeeded his agony of fear and apprehension about Lewis. He could now do nothing more for Lewis, and nothing for himself. He was athletic, although neither tall nor stout; but he did not have Lewis’s young litheness, and he was already much exhausted. There would be no clinging for hours to the bottom of the boat for him, and he was no swimmer; he would make a fight for his life, but he felt it would be of no avail. And Sylvia! As he recalled her last look upon him, he beat his forehead against the side of the boat like a madman; but the momentary wildness departed as quickly as it came. The recollection that he was on the threshold of another world calmed him with the awful majesty of the thought. He said to himself, “Sylvia understands--and she will never forget!” All sorts of strange ideas came crowding upon him in the darkness. All around him was a world of black and seething waters and shrieking winds. Could this be that blue and placid river upon which so much of his boyhood had been spent? Almost the first thing he remembered was standing at the windows of his nursery, when he was scarcely more than a baby, watching the dimpling shadows on the water, and wondering if it were deep enough to drown a very little boy. And he had lived in his boat as a boy, just as Lewis did. Then he remembered the September afternoon, so long ago, when he had taken Sylvia in his boat, and that night just such a terrible storm had come up as this; the bridge had been washed away, and the tide had overflowed all the flower beds at Deerchase and had come almost up to the hall door. He remembered the morning after, when he left Deerchase--the river, as far as eye could reach, a gigantic lagoon, muddy and turbulent. Would it look like that the next morning? and would a person drowned that night be found within a few hours? He did not remember ever to have heard of a single person being drowned in that river, and could not think whether the body would be washed ashore or would sink for days.