The time was mid-October. The forests had wrapped the cooling coast in warmth of coloring that was soft and many-hued as the shawls of Cashmere, while the sun-made fringe of goldenrod fell along the shores of river and island and sea.
Mrs. Bushnell's heart beat proudly above the fond affection that could not suppress a shiver, as the Turtle was pushed into the stream. She could not help seeing that David made a line fast from the seine-house to his boat ere he went down. They watched many minutes to see him rise to the surface, but he did not.
"Mother," said Ezra, "the pump for forcing water out when he wants to rise don't work, and we must pull him in. He feared it."
As he spoke the words he laid hold on the line, and began gently to draw on it.
"Hurry! hurry! _do!_" cried Mrs. Bushnell, seizing the same line close to the water's edge, and drawing on it with all her strength. She was vexed that Ezra had not told her the danger in the beginning, and she "knew _very_ well that SHE would not have stood there and let David die of suffocation, in that horrid, brass-topped coffin!"
"Hold, mother!" cried Ezra; "pull gently, or the line may part on some barnacled rock if it gets caught."
Nevertheless, Mrs. Bushnell pulled in as fast as she could.
The tide was sweeping up the river, and a shark, in hard chase after a school of menhaden, swam steadily up, with fin out of water.
Just as the shark reached the place, he made a dive, and the rope parted!
Mrs. Bushnell screamed a word or two of the terror that had seized her. Ezra looked up, amazed to find the rope coming in so readily, hand over hand. He cast it down, sprang to the boat, and pushed off to the possible rescue, only to find that the Turtle was making for the river-bank instead of the island.
He rowed to the spot. His brother, for the first time in his life, was overcome with disappointment and disinclined to talk.
"I--I," said David, wiping his forehead. "I grew tired, and made for shore. The tide was taking me up fast."
"Did you let go the line?" questioned Ezra.
"Have I? I never thought. I _forgot_ she was here. Let us get back, then;" and the two brothers, without speaking a word, rowed down against the sweep of tide, the great Turtle in tow.