So down we three--myself, and Bill there, and Philip Feltram--come to the boat; and we pulled out, keeping Snakes Island atwixt us and the wind.

'Twas smooth water wi' us, for 'twas a scug there, but white enough was all beyont the point; and passing the finger-stone, not forty fathom from the shore o' the island, Bill and me pullin' and he sittin' in the stern, poor lad, up he rises, a bit rabblin' to himself, wi' his hands lifted so.
"'Look a-head!' says I, thinkin' something wos comin' atort us.
"But 'twasn't that.

The boat was quiet, for while we looked, oo'er our shouthers, oo'er her bows, we didn't pull, so she lay still; and lookin' back again on Philip, he was rabblin' on all the same.
"'It's nobbut a prass wi' himsel", poor lad,' thinks I.
"But that wasn't it neither; for I sid something white come out o' t' water, by the gunwale, like a hand.

By Jen! and he leans oo'er and tuk it; and he sagged like, and so it drew him in, under the mere, before I cud du nout.

There was nout to thraa tu him, and no time; down he went, and I followed; and thrice I dived before I found him, and brought him up by the hair at last; and there he is, poor lad! and all one if he lay at the bottom o' t' mere." As Tom Marlin ended his narrative--often interrupted by the noise of the tempest without, and the peals of thunder that echoed awfully above, like the chorus of a melancholy ballad--the sudden clang of the hall-door bell, and a more faintly-heard knocking, announced a new arrival.
[Illustration: "I sid something white come out o' t' water, by the gunwale, like a hand."].