Gabriel reeled away, free, for a second; then, the passion,
the fury, the hate in his heart feeding his strength as youth fed the
locks of Samson, he darted, and lifted Dan in his two arms and threw him
like a stone into the water. Stiffened to ice, I waited for Dan to rise;
the other craft, the Follow, skimmed between us, and one man managing her
that she shouldn’t heel, the rest drew Dan in,——it’s not the depth of two
foot there,——tacked about, and after a minute came alongside, seized our
painter, and dropped him gently into his own boat. Then——for the Speed
had got afloat again——the thing stretched her two sails wing and wing,
and went ploughing up a great furrow of foam before her.
I sprang to Dan. He was not senseless, but in a kind of stupor: his
head had struck the fluke of a half-sunk anchor and it had stunned him,
but as the wound bled he recovered slowly and opened his eyes. Ah, what
misery was in them! I turned to the fugitives. They were yet in sight,
Mr. Gabriel sitting and seeming to adjure Faith, whose skirts he held;
but she stood, and her arms were outstretched, and, pale as a foam-wreath
her face, and piercing as a night-wind her voice, I heard her cry, “O
Georgie! Georgie!” It was too late for her to cry or to wring her hands
now. She should have thought of that before. But Mr. Gabriel rose and
drew her down, and hid her face in his arms and bent over it; and so they
fled up the basin and round the long line of sand, and out into the gloom
and the curdling mists.
I bound up Dan’s head. I couldn’t steer with an oar,——that was out of
the question,——but, as luck would have it, could row tolerably; so I got
down the little mast, and at length reached the wharves. The town-lights
flickered up in the darkness and flickered back from the black rushing
river, and then out blazed the great mills; and as I felt along, I
remembered times when we’d put in by the tender sunset, as the rose
faded out of the water and the orange ebbed down the west, and one by one
the sweet evening-bells chimed forth, so clear and high, and each with a
different tone, that it seemed as if the stars must flock, tinkling, into
the sky. And here were the bells ringing out again, ringing out of the
gray and the gloom, dull and brazen, as if they rang from some cavern of
shadows, or from the mouth of hell,——but no, _that_ was down river! Well,
I made my way, and the men on the landing took up Dan, and helped him in
and got him on my little bed, and no sooner there than the heavy sleep
with which he had struggled fell on him like lead.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account