en o'clock in the evening, when there was some talk of going about and
catching the wind, which had changed a good deal since noon and was now
coming more from the southeast, we were in the midst of a great waste of
sea in which I could not make out a sign of any craft but ours--not even
a trail of smoke on the horizon. The flat of the land had long since
disappeared: the upper slopes of the Cheviots on one side of Tweed and
of the Lammermoor Hills on the other, only just showed above the line of
the sea. There was, I say, nothing visible on all that level of scarcely
stirred water but our own sails, set to catch whatever breeze there was,
when that happened which not only brought me to the very gates of death,
but, in the mere doing of it, gave me the greatest horror of any that I
have ever known.

I was standing up at the moment, one foot on the gunwale, the other on
the planking behind me, carelessly balancing myself while I stared across
the sea in search of some object which he--this man that I trusted so
thoroughly and in whose company I had spent so many pleasant hours that
afternoon, and who was standing behind me at the moment--professed to see
in the distance, when he suddenly lurched against me, as if he had
slipped and lost his footing. That was what I believed in that startling
moment--but as I went head first overboard I was aware that his fall was
confined to a sprawl into the scuppers. Overboard I went!--but he
remained where he was. And my weight--I was weighing a good thirteen
stone at that time, being a big and hefty youngster--carried me down and
down into the green water, for I had been shot over the side with
considerable impetus. And when I came up, a couple of boat's-lengths from
the yacht, expecting to find that he was bringing her up so that I could
scramble aboard, I saw with amazed and incredulous affright that he was
doing nothing of the sort; instead, working at it as hard as he could
go, he was letting out a couple of reefs which he had taken up in the
mainsail an hour before--in another minute they were out, the yacht moved
more swiftly, and, springing to the tiller, he deliberately steered her
clear away from me.

I suppose I saw his purpose all at once. Perhaps it drove me wild, mad,
frenzied. The yacht was going away from me fast--faster; good swimmer
though I was, it was impossible for me to catch up to her--she was making
her own length to every stroke I took, and as she drew away he