More than one pair of callous hands were clasped in prayer; women were on their knees, sobbing, moaning, pressing their nails into the flesh, tearing their hair, screaming as if mad, when another dreadful wave rolled up and on over him, and he vanished in the swell.--But there he was again! It had cast him back half the distance he had traversed; but a minute later he had retrieved the lost ground. He had been driven quite a distance down stream, but had chosen well his starting point; the terrace was still far below him. It seemed a miracle that he came through the stream! And now he was in the middle of it! It was the worst place--they knew it from their previous experience! He seemed not to advance, but, instead, gradually to lose headway.--But the terrace was still below him; if he overcame the middle of the current, he could, he must succeed!--And now he was gaining ground perceptibly--nearer and nearer, foot by foot--in a diagonal curved line toward the terrace!-- Rough, quarrelsome fellows who had been enemies all their lives, had clasped hands; women fell sighing into each other's arms. A gentleman with short gray hair and heavy gray mustache, who had just run up from the village, taking his stand close by the burning willows, almost enveloped by their flames, had followed the swimmer with steady gaze and with fervent prayers and promises--that everything, everything, should be forgiven and forgotten, if only he should have him back again, his dear, heroic son!--He now cried out aloud--a terrible cry which the storm carried away and hurled down upon the shore where the men were standing who held the line, shouting to them to pull back--back--back!--It was too late! Then down came the mighty fir-tree, at the foot of which the swimmer had sat an hour before--torn loose by the storm, hurled into the flood, rolling on in the whirlpool of the stream, like a giant emerging from the deep, now turning up its mighty roots which still held the rock in their grasp, and now the top; now rising erect as it had once stood in the light of the sun, and in the next moment crashing down upon the swimmer--then plunging with its top into the foaming currents and turning its roots upward as it hurried out of the light into the darker night. They drew him back, as, strangely enough, the thin line had not broken--a dead man, at whose side, as he lay stretched out upon the shore (he had only a wide, gaping wound above his brow, like one who had died an honorable cavalryman's death) the old man with the gray mustache knelt down, kissed him upon the beautiful, pale lips, and then rose up.--"Now give me the line! It was my son! And over there is my daughter!" It seemed madness! The young man--they had seen how he struggled!--But the old man!--Though he was old, he was nevertheless a large man, with broad high chest. He threw off his coat and vest. "If you find, General, that you cannot hold out, give us the sign at the right time," said the Burgess.