We had reached the draw, it was lifted for the Speed, she had passed, and the wind was in her sail once more.  Yet, somehow, she hung back.  And then I saw that the men in her were of those with whom Mr. Gabriel had spoken at noon.  Dan’s sail fell slack, and we drifted slowly through, while he poled us along with an oar.

“Look out, Georgie!” said Dan, for he thought I was going to graze my shoulder upon the side there.  I looked; and when I turned again, Mr. Gabriel was rising up from some earnest and hurried sentence to Faith.  And Faith, too, was standing, standing and swaying with indecision, and gazing away out before her,—­so flushed and so beautiful,—­so loath and so willing.  Poor thing! poor thing! as if her rising in itself were not the whole!

Mr. Gabriel stepped across the boat, stooped a minute, and then also took an oar.  How perfect he was, as he stood there that moment!—­perfect like a statue, I mean,—­so slender, so clean-limbed, his dark face pale to transparency in the green light that filtered through the draw! and then a ray from the sunset came creeping over the edge of the high fields and smote his eyes sidelong so that they glowed like jewels, and he with his oar planted firmly hung there bending far back with it, completely full of strength and grace.

“It is not the bateaux in the rapids,” said he.

“What are you about?” asked Dan, with sudden hoarseness.  “You are pulling the wrong way!”

Mr. Gabriel laughed, and threw down his oar, and stepped back again; gave his hand to Faith, and half led, half lifted her, over the side, and into the Speed, followed, and never looked behind him.  They let go something they had held, the Speed put her nose in the water and sprinkled us with spray, plunged, and dashed off like an arrow.

It was like him,—­daring and insolent coolness!  Just like him!  Always the soul of defiance!  None but one so reckless and impetuous as he would have dreamed of flying into the teeth of the tempest in that shell of a schooner.  But he was mad with love, and they—­there wasn’t a man among them but was the worse for liquor.

For a moment Dan took it, as Mr. Gabriel had expected him to do, as a joke, and went to trim the boat for racing, not meaning they should reach town first.  But I—­I saw It all.

“Dan!” I sung out, “save her!  She’s not coming back!  They’ll make for the schooner at Black Rocks!  Oh, Dan, he’s taken her off!”

Now one whose intelligence has never been trained, who shells his five wits and gets rid of the pods as best he can, mayn’t be so quick as another, but, like an animal, he feels long before he sees; and a vague sense of this had been upon Dan all day.  Yet now he stood thunderstruck, and the thing went on before his very eyes.  It was more than he could believe at once,—­and perhaps his first feeling was, Why should he hinder?  And then the flood fell.  No thought of his loss,—­though loss it wa’n’t,—­only of his friend,—­of such stunning treachery, that, if the sun fell hissing into the sea at noon, it would have mattered less,—­only of that loss that tore his heart out with it.