anner, her body in
every move was rich with a sort of exaltation.

As yet the bridge had not reached them. It might have been checked
altogether in the linn, or it might still be slowly grinding its way
round the great bend of the river, that Gilian had cut off by his plunge
through the wood. But at least he was there to alarm, for its assault,
borne down on the spate, would be worse by far than that of the timber.
He beat his way again, bent, through the wind, to the water-edge now
so far in and separate from the ship, and cried out a loud warning. It
seemed to himself as he did so the voice of an infant, so weak was it,
so shrill and piping, buffeted about by Heaven's large and overwhelming
utterance. They paid no heed at first, but by-and-by they heard him.

"The bridge! God! do you tell me?" cried Black Duncan in a visible
consternation. "Is it far up?"

Gilian put his hand to his mouth and trumpeted his response.

"The bend! My sorrow! she's as good as on us then. We must be at our
departures."

The mariners scurried about the deck; Black Duncan threw off the
prisoning cable; there were shouts, swift looks, and a breathless pause;
the _Jean_ swung round before the corner of her jib laboured clumsily
for a moment unbelieving of her release, then drifted slowly from the
river mouth, her little boat and her tiller left behind, the first
caught by the warring tree-trunks, the latter dashed from Nan's hands
by the swing of an unfastened boom. As helpless as the logs she had been
encountering, she was loose before the wind that drove her parallel with
the shore at no safe distance from its fringe of rocks.

Gilian, scarcely knowing what he did, ran along the shore, following
her course, looking at her with a wild eye. The men were calling to
him, waving, pointing, but what they meant he could not surmise; all his
interest was in the girl who stood motionless, seemingly aghast at her
mishap, with her hair still blowing about her.

To the north where he was running, black masses of clouds were piling,
and the sea, so far as the eye could reach, was weltering more cruelly
than before. Seagulls screamed without ceasing, and the human imitation
of their calls roused uncanny notions that they welcomed the vessel to
her doom. She seemed so helpless, so hopeless, dashed upon by the spume
of those furious lips, bit by the grinding teeth.

But yet he ran on and on over the salt grass or the old wrack that the
sea-spray we