ver, hanging to the
side of one of those ridiculous ocean rollers out of bounds; and he
thought it no wonder that he--even he--had been tossed off under the
circumstances. The crew, who were not sitting on a skimming dish, as it
were, had their work cut out to hold on. As he looked, he measured his
drift with serious disquietude, although the preposterous idea of
anybody being drowned had not as yet occurred to him. Drowned HERE! A
good joke, indeed! Why, they were within hail of Sandridge, and
half-a-dozen ships--or they would have been, but for the noise of wind
and water, which smothered lesser sounds; and the lights of
Williamstown--amongst them that of the little home awaiting
him--studded the shore on the other hand, near and clear, like the eyes
of a host of watching friends. And in Hobson's Bay, which could hardly
cover the body of a sunk yacht; and right up by the river, which had to
be dredged all the time to keep it open!

But where was Lily? It scared him to find himself out of arm's reach of
her, forced back by the swell, and not to see her immediately when he
was able to look. He saw the launch--which of course was entirely
occupied in her rescue--and saw two white buoys floating, and saw a
line thrown, but nothing else, except the wild water that buffeted him,
and the moonless night overhead. And he remembered that the river
channel--indeed, Hobson's Bay in any part--was just as dangerous as
mid-Atlantic to one who could not swim. The thought clutched him like a
hand at his throat.

"Got her?" he yelled, in a fury of terror. "Got her? See her?"

He strained to make himself heard by the men on the launch in a way to
burst his heart. They shouted something that he could not understand,
and a line came whizzing past him. He caught it as it dropped, and soon
lessened the distance between them. Then he perceived a long boat-hook
stretching out into the darkness; it went up and down with the toss of
the boat like the fishing-rod of an impatient school-boy, and a few
yards beyond its reach, where it touched water, there was a dim smudge.
He knew it for the full cape of Lily's macintosh, outspread upon the
waves. They alternately rumpled and smoothed it, flapping it into all
shapes as they tossed and toyed with it; but, by the mercy of Heaven,
it had held her up. In the middle of the mass he could see her dear
little head hanging forward and downward, just under the surface, out
of which a larger or smaller sp