Guthrie Carey gave a last look round, identified the window of what was
to have been his home, where the fire was burning brightly, the little
supper spread, good Mrs Hardacre watching for them at the door--heard
the landlady's cousin wailing, "Lil! Lil!"--and again plunged under,
arms wide and eyes staring, and heart bursting with despair. Everything
in him seemed bursting--an agonising sensation--as his overstrained
lungs collapsed, and the power of his strong limbs failed him; then
everything seemed to break away and let in the floods of Lethe with a
rush--confusion and forgetfulness and a whirl of dreams, settling to a
strange peace, an irresistible sleep, as if he had swallowed a magic
opiate. The sea took him, as a nurse takes a helpless child, and
floated him up from the place where he had been savagely groping;
something met him half-way, floating down upon him, and his arms went
round it of their own accord. But they were powerless to clasp or hold
it. It passed him, sinking gently, and lay where it sank, under all the
turmoil, as still as the rocking tide would let it.

The launch sounded her steam whistle furiously. From both sides of the
bay it was heard, screeching through the windy night like a fiend
possessed, and men got up hastily to ask what was the matter. Another
launch put out from Williamstown, and a police boat from Sandridge, and
the anchored ships awoke and hailed them. Soon half-a-dozen boats were
tossing about the spot; they tossed for two hours, and Bill Hardacre
dived seven times with a rope round his waist, while the widowed
young husband lay on the cabin floor between two doctors, the baby and
the landlady's cousin keening over him.

"Well," said Dugald Finlayson, as at last they headed for Williamstown
through the now lessening storm, with a bundle in tarpaulin beside