‘She’s straight ahead. Ain’t ye goin’ to keep away?’ screamed Uncle Luke, for the whistling of the wind was deafening. Mark noted the speed of the barge, then measured the distance between the two. ‘All right, mate,’ he shouted, ‘we’ll clear.’ The barge sped on, the tug advanced quickly, Uncle Mark watched, carelessly at first, then anxiously. The tug was woefully near; by swerving slightly from her course she could have passed by the barge’s stern--by keeping steadily on she seemed likely to cut it through the middle. Uncle Mark concluded that the tug would clear him; the tug calculated that the barge must ‘keep away;’ and she came straight on. A collision seemed unavoidable, when Uncle Mark screamed:-- ‘Haul in the main sheet!’ and, with a cry, he put down the helm. He had jibbed her as the only chance of escape. The barge swept round before the shrieking wind with her bowsprit within a few inches of the tug’s side, quivering through and through as she heeled over, with a thunder crash, almost wrenching out the mast. Then there was a crash, like the bursting of a cannon, a great splash in the water--a shout from the tug. Uncle Luke, who had been thrown flat on his face, scrambled to his feet to find the tiller abandoned, the great boom in two, the mast bending like a reed, and Uncle Mark--gone! Abandoned by the helmsman, the barge swept round into the wind, with her great sails flapping uselessly, and her whole fabric like a drifting wreck. Confused by the accident and the thunderous sound of shrouds and sails, Uncle Luke, who could not at any time get his ideas to work quickly, gazed about him for a few moments in horrified despair--then he saw that the tug, having reversed her engines, was close upon the barge, and that a boat which she had put out was rowing swiftly towards a figure which was floating, apparently lifeless, on the waves--the figure of Uncle Mark. Dead? It seemed so--the body was moveless, the face livid, and it floated without a struggle. Suddenly Uncle Luke became aware that the deck of the barge was withdrawing itself from his feet. The shaking of the mast had wrenched open the timbers--the water was pouring in like a torrent, the barge was rapidly sinking. He leapt into the punt which floated behind, cut the painter with his knife, and, utterly unmindful of the barge, pulled rapidly to the spot where they were rescuing Uncle Mark. They had got him into the boat by this time, and he lay in the stern motionless, his cheeks ashen grey, his lips bloody, his eyes half closed. With a wild cry like that of a child, Luke leapt into the boat, abandoning his own, seized the cold wet hand, smoothed back the dripping hair, and began to cry and moan. ‘Mark, mate, open your eyes,’ he cried. ‘What ails you?--don’t you know Luke--your brother Luke?’ But Mark answered neither by sign nor word--a splinter of the boom had struck him senseless, and almost killed him at a blow.