“Well, keep this in your pocket then.” He took off his watch. “And here’s this.” He put a little leather case in her hand, smiling and saying hurriedly, under his breath: “With all my worldly goods I thee endow.” Then facing about he signaled to his volunteers. In the undisciplined fashion of her sex, Hildegarde, forgetting to go back behind the barrier, stood at gaze. Cheviot, carrying with him something quick and quivering out of the heart of the girl (something that kept her linked to him not by eye and mind alone, but as by a bond that established oneness of the very flesh, faithfully reporting effort and transmitting feeling), he disappeared over the ship’s side after the officer, followed by the six volunteers. With steady eyes the girl watched the buffeting of the heavy-weighted boat, and watched the fog blur it till it looked like something seen in a dream. Cheviot at the bow, by the uniformed figure, less distinct both of them than the big German with his black-and-yellow cap at the stern. Now the “kedgers” were passing the small boat, and now they had gained the buoys. Hildegarde saw the officer turn, and knew he was giving some direction. Now they were trying to steady the pitching boat directly over the selected site, shown by a buoy faintly vermilion, bobbing to right and to left. No easy affair to keep the boat there long enough to plant the great anchor. The officer stood up, and in a sudden lurch all but capsized, steadied himself and seemed to wait. There was a shipping of oars; the picture danced and then dissolved. No, no, there it was! But what had happened, why did it look so strange? The men! there wasn’t one in the boat. And so many dim buoys—no, _heads_! Lord, Lord, have mercy! The boat was turned completely over and drowning men were clinging to the keel. Were they all there! Which was Louis? One couldn’t even count, for the waves would wash over a man and wipe him out. A moment, and there he was again! That, _that_ was Louis! Could he keep hold on the plunging keel? (Lord God, be kind!) But he seemed not to have been washed away. He was swimming to the place where a man had been and was no more. Now Louis had hold of him. And there was the other boat—the little one, as though she’d dropped from the skies, or risen from the bed of the ocean; and she was taking a man on board! Not Louis, but the one who had once gone down—the huge German. Two men! Three were hauled in. Not one of them Louis! He kept a hand on the gunwale of the overcrowded little boat, and swam with it toward the buoys. Why was he and those others still struggling in the water, what were they trying to do? To right the long boat? Oh, let it alone and come back! After endless moments, Louis and the rest, with the help of the men in the small boat, had got the other right side up again. Now both crews were coming back.