There was a horrible warning of dawn in the blackness when Stella, soaked to the skin, her hair lashing about her unconscious face like whips, and far more dead than alive, was at last carried home. I believe there were great controversies afterwards between the steam-tug and the fishing boats which claimed to have saved her--controversies which might have been spared, since Mr. Tredgold paid neither, fortified by the statement of the yachtsmen that neither had been of any use, and that the _Stella_ had at last blundered her way back of her own accord and their superior management. He had to pay for the tug, which put forth by his orders, but only as much as was barely necessary, with no such gratuity as the men had hoped for; while to the fishers he would give nothing, and Katherine’s allowance was all expended for six months in advance in recompensing these clamorous rescuers who had not succeeded in rescuing anyone. Stella was very ill for a few days; when she recovered the wetting and the cold, then she was ill of the imagination, recalling more clearly than at first all the horrors which she had passed through. As soon as she was well enough to recover the use of her tongue she did nothing but talk of this tremendous experience in her life, growing proud of it as she got a little way beyond it and saw the thrilling character of the episode in full proportion. At first she would faint away, or rather, almost faint away (between two which things there is an immense difference), as she recalled the incidents of that night. But after a while they became her favourite and most delightful subjects of conversation. She entertained all her friends with the account of her adventure as she lay pale, with her pretty hair streaming over her pillow, not yet allowed to get up after all she had gone through, but able to receive her habitual visitors. “The feeling that came over me when it got dark, oh! I can’t describe what it was,” said Stella. “I thought it was a shadow at first. The sail throws such a shadow sometimes; it’s like a great bird settling down with its big wing. But when it came down all round and one saw it wasn’t a shadow, but darkness--night!--oh, how horrible it was! I thought I should have died, out there on the great waves and the water dashing into the boat, and the cliffs growing fainter and fainter, and the horrible, horrible dark!” “Stella dear, don’t excite yourself again. It is all over, God be praised.”