“Tell me what has happened.”  He put aside my hands, and went past me without a second look.

“There has nothing happened, but what he can tell you when he comes,” he said, as he strode past me up the steps, and on into the house.  Then he was alive to tell me:  the reaction was a little too strong for me, and I sat down on the steps to try and recover myself, for I was ill and giddy.

In a few moments more, more steps sounded in the distance, this time slowly, several persons coming together.  I started and ran up the steps, I don’t exactly know why, and stood behind the others, who were crowding down, servants and all, to hear what was the news.  Kilian came first, very drenched, and spattered, and subdued looking, then Mr. Langenau, leaning upon one of the men, very pale, but making an attempt to smile and speak reassuringly to Sophie, who met him with looks of great alarm.  It evidently gave him dreadful pain to move, and when he reached the house he was quite faint.  Charlotte Benson placed a chair, into which they supported him.

“Run, Pauline, and get some brandy,” said Sophie, putting a bunch of keys into my hand without looking at me.

When I came back with the glass of brandy, he was conscious again, and looked at me and took the glass from my hand.  The other man had been sent for the doctor from the village, who was expected every moment, and Mr. Langenau, who was now revived by stimulants, was quite reassuring, and attempted to laugh at us for being so much frightened.  Then the young ladies’ curiosity got the better of their terror, and they clamored for the history of the past two hours.  This history was given them principally by Kilian.  I cannot repeat it satisfactorily, for the reason that I don’t know anything about jibs, and bowsprits, and masts, and centre-boards, and I did not understand it at the time; but I received enough out of the mass of evidence presented in that language, to be sure that there had been considerable danger, and that everybody had behaved well.  In fact, Kilian’s changed manner toward the tutor of itself was quite enough to show that he had behaved unexpectedly well.

The unvarnished and unbowspritted and unjib-boomed tale was pretty much as follows:  Mr. Langenau had found himself in the middle of the river, when the storm came on.  I am afraid he could not have been thinking very much about the clouds, not to have noticed that a storm was rising; though every one agreed that they had never known anything like the rapidity of its coming up.  Before he knew what he was about, a squall struck him, and he had great difficulty to right the boat. (Then followed a good deal about luffing and tacking and keeping her taut to windward; that is, I think that was where he wanted to keep her.) But whatever it was, he didn’t succeed in doing it, and Kilian vouchsafed to say nobody could have done it.  Then something split:  I really cannot say whether it was the mast, or the bowsprit, or the centre-board, but whatever it was, it hurt Mr. Langenau so much that for a moment he was stunned.  And then Kilian cannot see why he wasn’t drowned.  When he came to himself he was still holding the rudder in his hand.