“Gabriel!” he shouted,—­“Gabriel!” And his voice was heart-rending.  I know that Mr. Gabriel felt it, for he never turned nor stirred.

Then I don’t know what came over Dan:  a blind rage swelling in his heart seemed to make him larger in every limb; he towered like a flame.  He sprang to the tiller, but, as he did so, saw with one flash of his eye that Mr. Gabriel had unshipped the rudder and thrown it away.  He seized an oar to steer with in its place; he saw that they, in their ignorance fast edging on the flats, would shortly be aground; more fisherman than sailor, he knew a thousand tricks of boat-craft that they had never heard of.  We flew, we flew through cloven ridges, we became a wind ourselves, and while I tell it he was beside them, had gathered himself as if to leap the chasm between time and eternity, and had landed among them in the Speed.  The wherry careened with the shock and the water poured into her, and she flung headlong and away as his foot spurned her.  Heaven knows why she didn’t upset, for I thought of nothing but the scene before me as I drifted off from it.  I shut the eyes in my soul now, that I mayn’t see that horrid scuffle twice.  Mr. Gabriel, he rose, he turned.  If Dan was the giant beside him, he himself was so well-knit, so supple, so adroit, that his power was like the blade in the hand.  Dan’s strength was lying round loose, but Mr. Gabriel’s was trained, it hid like springs of steel between brain and wrist, and from him the clap fell with the bolt.  And then, besides, Dan did not love Faith, and he did love Gabriel.  Any one could see how it would go.  I screamed.  I cried, “Faith!  Faith!” And some natural instinct stirred in Faith’s heart, for she clung to Mr. Gabriel’s arm to pull him off from Dan.  But he shook her away like rain.  Then such a mortal weakness took possession of me that I saw everything black, and, when it was clean gone, I looked, and they were locked in each other’s arms, fierce, fierce and fell, a death-grip.  They were staggering to the boat’s edge:  only this I saw, that Mr. Gabriel was inside:  suddenly the helmsman interposed with an oar, and broke their grasps.  Mr. Gabriel reeled away, free, for a second; then, the passion, the fury, the hate in his heart feeding his strength as youth fed the locks of Samson, he darted, and lifted Dan in his two arms and threw him like a stone into the water.  Stiffened to ice, I waited for Dan to rise; the other craft, the Follow, skimmed between us, and one man managing her that she shouldn’t heel, the rest drew Dan in,—­it’s not the depth of two foot there,—­tacked about, and after a minute came along-side, seized our painter, and dropped him gently into his own boat.  Then—­for the Speed had got afloat again—­the thing stretched her two sails wing and wing, and went ploughing up a great furrow of foam before her.