He swore softly under his breath while he looked full into my face, and then he leaned forward and kissed me.

“Maisie!” Mama shrieked.

I opened my eyes again and saw there was now only fifty feet between us, and, horrified, I saw also that my mother stood in the shaky little boat. Her white dress shone preternaturally bright beneath the moon, rendering her figure horribly distended and unnatural as her arms reached for me. Again she cried, “Maisie!”

Bart stood up behind me and, unthinking, I stood suddenly also, causing the boat to wrench violently, knocking Bart from off his feet so that he fell backward against the narrow prow with a heavy thud. I wheeled round and saw he lay as if stunned, unmoving, his arms sprawled over the gunwales and his face upward, his throat bared to the sky. “Bart!” I gasped, stumbling in the still-rocking boat and tripping over my soaked skirts as I tried to reach him in the bow.

“Maisie!” came Mama’s voice behind me now, very close, the lantern light casting its yellow glare across the painted oars in our boat, and across Bart’s closed eyes. He moaned weakly.

There was a splash as she fell into the water. “Mama?” I whispered, unbelieving, afraid to turn round. I sat stalled at the middle seat, Bart’s form lying in front of me.

“Elizabeth!” Mr. Cutting cried into the white night.

“Mama!” I shouted, and her two names crossed the water to echo round our boats, carried by a gentle caprice of wind. We stood waiting for her to reappear. From the corner of my eye, I saw Cook wheeling round and moving forward to give help. A terrible minute passed, and still I could not see or hear any evidence of poor Mama. Bart raised his head groggily in the bottom of the boat. I threw off my shawl and leaned over the gunwales once more, desperately searching the water for some sight of Mama’s head. Bart sat up beside me, holding the back of his neck. “What is it?”

I turned, frantically unbuttoning my vest. “Mama has fallen into the water.”

Without a word, he rose to his feet, shaky but determined, and then dove in after Mama. “Bart!” I whispered. I thought I saw him shoot past the oars into the waters between the boats, and standing to mark his progress, I caught sight of Cook suddenly halting in midstroke.

Incapable of moving, Mr. Cutting stood in the opposite boat, holding his lantern aloft in echo of my own solitary terror. We watched for several moments and then there was a faint splash on the other side of him, and he swung his lantern round after the sound. “Elizabeth!” he shouted. I heard another splash and, I thought, a soft moan in the distance.