Mr. Hunnowell nodded in agreement and directed the boys to tie the boats up and then to run fast as they might up the hill to the House for help. I could see the boys linger after they had slipped the lines through the dock rings, and so again, and this time more gently, Mr. Hunnowell directed them to go. I stepped back from the edge of the pier so the men should not see me if they followed the boys up the gangway with their eyes. The boys passed me by without a sound, racing each other across the pier and into the boathouse, their feet pounding upon the wooden planks and then vanishing up the dew-sopped lawn.

I drew close to the top and looked down again. Standing side by side, each still in his boat, Papa and Bart Hunnowell considered the drowned pair. I could not see the man’s face, but his dark shirt had a great tear and the shocking white of his bare back reminded me of a small boy’s—though I could see he had been powerful once, and lithe. I glimpsed very little of the woman beneath him, save her bare arm reaching up across his back, her hand clinging even now to the neck of her beloved. He had wrapped himself around her and then clung fast to the mast, and thus to loose them from the mast was to break the two of them apart.

Clearly, neither Papa nor Mr. Hunnowell wished to do this, for they hesitated, standing silently above the pair. At least Bart Hunowell gently touched the man’s hand as if in greeting, and Papa began to pull the stout mast from the dead man’s grasp so it might fall over the side of his boat. Hand over hand, Papa eased it through until the mast slid free and quietly sank back into the water.

But the mast had served to link the boats, and now the sterns of the two dinghies began to yawn apart. Mr. Hunnowell reached forward to grab the clasped torsos of the man and woman, just as Papa’s boat swung wide and the bottom half of the bodies plunged into that freezing water. Suddenly Mr. Hunnowell was pitched into the sinking stern of his boat, clutched in a terrible embrace and the full weight of the dead dragging him down with them.

I gasped and stepped onto the gangway.

“Maisie!” Papa shouted to me, and I ran the remaining feet down to the dock and knelt there, reaching to grab hold of Mr. Hunnowell’s shirt just as Papa caught the dinghy’s side to stop the desperate tipping. For an eerie moment, we five of us, living and dead, clung together, trying to stay gravity’s pull. Softly, the balance tipped.

“Are you able to hold them?” Mr. Hunnowell grunted to Papa.