The high black craft careened over to the awful strain.  A loud crack came out of her, followed by the tearing and splintering of wood.  “There!” said the awed voice in my ear.  “He’s carried away their towing chock.”  And then, with enthusiasm, “Oh!  Look!  Look! sir, Look! at them Dutchmen skipping out of the way on the forecastle.  I hope to goodness he’ll break a few of their shins before he’s done with ’em.”

I yelled my vain protests.  The rays of the rising sun coursing level along the plain warmed my back, but I was hot enough with rage.  I could not have believed that a simple towing operation could suggest so plainly the idea of abduction, of rape.  Falk was simply running off with the Diana.

The white tug careered out into the middle of the river.  The red floats of her paddle-wheels revolving with mad rapidity tore up the whole reach into foam.  The Diana in mid-stream waltzed round with as much grace as an old barn, and flew after her ravisher.  Through the ragged fog of smoke driving headlong upon the water I had a glimpse of Falk’s square motionless shoulders under a white hat as big as a cart-wheel, of his red face, his yellow staring eyes, his great beard.  Instead of keeping a lookout ahead, he was deliberately turning his back on the river to glare at his tow.  The tall heavy craft, never so used before in her life, seemed to have lost her senses; she took a wild sheer against her helm, and for a moment came straight at us, menacing and clumsy, like a runaway mountain.  She piled up a streaming, hissing, boiling wave half-way up her blunt stem, my crew let out one great howl,—­and then we held our breaths.  It was a near thing.  But Falk had her!  He had her in his clutch.  I fancied I could hear the steel hawser ping as it surged across the Diana’s forecastle, with the hands on board of her bolting away from it in all directions.  It was a near thing.  Hermann, with his hair rumpled, in a snuffy flannel shirt and a pair of mustard-coloured trousers, had rushed to help with the wheel.  I saw his terrified round face; I saw his very teeth uncovered by a sort of ghastly fixed grin; and in a great leaping tumult of water between the two ships the Diana whisked past so close that I could have flung a hair-brush at his head, for, it seems, I had kept them in my hands all the time.  Meanwhile Mrs. Hermann sat placidly on the skylight, with a woollen shawl on her shoulders.  The excellent woman in response to my indignant gesticulations fluttered a handkerchief, nodding and smiling in the kindest way imaginable.  The boys, only half-dressed, were jumping about the poop in great glee, displaying their gaudy braces; and Lena in a short scarlet petticoat, with peaked elbows and thin bare arms, nursed the rag-doll with devotion.  The whole family passed before my sight as if dragged across a scene of unparalleled violence.  The last I saw was Hermann’s niece with the baby Hermann in her arms standing apart from the others.  Magnificent in her close-fitting