I wandered down toward the dock and through the boathouse’s weathered gray interior, passing by the unpainted boards hung with life preservers, cast-off buoys, and skeins of rope wound sailor-fashion in tight circles out onto the wide surface of the pier built up high above the wharf, where several lobster traps were stacked against the wooden railings. Behind these, the scene was a wash of gray and black, the color of trees and grass and the white flashes of birch abandoned to this ribbon of sea still overhung with the thick gray. No wind blew motion into the water, and so, though the morning was damp, it was not chill, but rather edgeless. And though Mr. Homer would never paint so soft a scene, to me, such silence entranced. To me, the gray hollow beckoned.

I heard the creak of oarlocks as oars turned in the metal cups, crossing and dipping, the water dropping off the blades in even sheets. Then advancing toward me out of that hollow, two rowboats came in slow tandem, side by side. And this time, it was no apparition, nor billow in the dense air. I could not see why the boats should be hobbled together, nor why with two men rowing they should come so slowly—and this eerie, dripping, slow, and quiet approach froze me to my spot. Two boys sat perfectly still in the bow of one boat, watching the water for rocks and calling out directions to the rowers, their small, scared voices chiming like warning bells. I saw it was Papa in one dinghy, and in the other I recognized Bartholomew Hunnowell. He had shed his jacket, and his shirt glowed against the dark band of that motionless sea. Each man had shipped his inboard oar, rowing forward with the outer, their two backs reaching and pulling together as they made their careful progress in to shore—and then, at last, I saw what they carried.

Slung across the sterns lay a man and a woman—the cold arms clasped around each other and round what must have been the snapped mast of their wrecked boat. And the length of mast and man had forced the rescuers to sling the drowned pair awkwardly between the boats—half in one, half in the other—though I saw Mr. Hunnowell’s jacket was laid on the seat beneath their shoulders, looking for all the world as if he had meant to soften the hard ride.

When they reached the wharf, the boys grabbed the rings on the pilings and pulled the doubled load in. Papa and Mr. Hunnowell shipped their oars and sat a moment conferring, the boys holding tightly to the dock in silence. Still, none of them had seen me, and I took care they did not discover me now.

“We must loose them from the mast,” Papa said.