fire had parted the boat's lines and she was
being blown out into the current. Then your uncle struggled half up
again and helped Phyllis get the mattress outside the bull railings,
where I climbed out and held it. He asked if I could swim and when I
said yes he warned me not to swim to the shore as the river was falling
and the bank caving, but to float with the mattress and call till I was
picked up. So I went over with it. But it twisted away from me. I swam
to a floating cotton bale, one with a flicker of fire still on it, as it
drifted up-stream in the eddy. At the same time I'd heard your uncle and
Phyllis strike the water together, and a moment later I saw them--their
heads. She was holding to the mattress with one hand and to him with the
other. But presently I heard her give a low wail and saw him slip from
her and sink. Then the smoke came down between us, and by and by the
returning yawl, whose men had heard my calls and had seen Mr. Gillmore's
skiff pick up the mate, found me on the cotton bale and had barely
lifted me in when I fainted away."

Ramsey covered her face again. It would have been joy to her to let one
of the drops that melted through her fingers fall on Hugh's hand.

Watson cleared his throat. "Sort o' inquirin' fo' one o' you, down on
the roof," he said without looking back. He was a man not above
repeating himself for a good end. "Third time they've sung out to me,
but--up here I off'm don't notice much f'om anywheres 'at ain't hove
right at me."

Ned entered and silently took the wheel.

XXXII

A PROPHET IN THE WILDERNESS

Through all the middle watch of Sunday night, with her Ned quite alone
in the pilot-house, the _Votaress_ came and passed from crossing to
crossing, up reaches, through chutes, around points and bends, a meteor
in harness. Such she seemed from the dim shores. So came, so passed,
before the drowsy gaze of that strange attenuated fraction of humanity
which scantily peopled the waters and margins of the great river to win
from it the bare elements of livelihood or transit, winning them at a
death-rate not far below the immigrant's and in a vagabondage often as
wild as that of the water-fowl passing unseen in the upper darkness.

If to the contemplation of the Courteneys, father and son, the fair
craft, "with all her light and life, speeding, twinkling on and on
through the night," was "a swarm of stars," or "one little whole world,"
how shall we see her--with