strong, and a surprising distance seemed to broaden between me and the Hermana before another boat came into sight around her stern.  By then, or just after that (for I cannot clearly remember the details of these few anxious minutes), I had caught up with John, whose face, and total silence, as he gripped the stern of the boat with one hand and held Hortense with the other, plainly betrayed it was high time somebody came.  A man can swim (especially in salt water) with his shoes on, and his clothes add nothing of embarrassment, if his arms are free; but a woman’s clothes do not help either his buoyancy or the freedom of his movement.  John now lifted Hortense’s two hands, which took a good hold of the boat.  From between her lips the dishevelled cigarette, bitten through and limp, fell into the water.  The boat felt the weight of the two hands to it.

“Take care,” I warned John.

Hortense opened her eyes and looked at me; she knew that I meant her.  “I’ll not swamp you.”  This was her first remark.  Her next was when, after no incautious haste, I had hauled her in over the stern, John working round to the bow for the sake of balance:  “I was not dressed for swimming.”  Very quietly did Hortense speak; very coolly, very evenly; no fainting—­and no flippancy; she was too game for either.

After this, whatever emotions she had felt, or was feeling, she showed none of them, unless it was by her complete silence.  John’s coming into the boat we managed with sufficient dexterity; aided by the horrified Charley, who now arrived personally in the other boat, and was for taking all three of us into that.  But this was altogether unnecessary; he was made to understand that such transferences as it would occasion were superfluous, and so one of his men stepped into our boat to help me to row back against the current; and for this I was not unthankful.

Our return took, it appeared to me, a much longer time than everything else which had happened.  When I looked over my shoulder at the Hermana, she seemed an incredible distance off, and when I looked again, she had grown so very little nearer that I abandoned this fruitless proceeding.  Charley’s boat had gone ahead to announce the good news to General Rieppe as soon as possible.  But if our return was long to me, to Hortense it was not so.  She sat beside her lover in the stern, and I knew that he was more to her than ever:  it was her spirit also that wanted him now.  Poor Kitty’s words of prophecy had come perversely true:  “Something will happen, and that boy’ll be conspicuous.”  Well, it had happened with a vengeance, and all wrong for Kitty, and all wrong for me!  Then I remembered Charley, last of all.  My doubt as to what he would have done, had he been on deck, was settled later by learning from his own lips that he did not know how to swim.