"No danger in the world, sir," said a young fop standing by, who knew as little about boating on Scotch lakes as he did of most things any where else. Meanwhile, the air had become chill, the sun had sunk behind the hills, and the boating party, tired, apparently, of their monotonous amusement, turned the boat's head toward shore. For some minutes they advanced with fuller and fuller bulging sail in the direction they sought, when suddenly the breeze seemed not so much to change as to be met by another and stronger current of air, which came pouring through the valley with a howling sound, and then, bursting on the lake, drove its waters in a furrow before it. The little boat started, and swerved like a frightened creature; and the sail, distended to its utmost, cowered down to the water's edge.
"Good God! why don't they lower that sail? Down with it! down with it!" shouted the same deep voice from the balcony, regardless of the impossibility of being heard. But the admonition was needless; the boatman, with quick, eager motions, was trying to lower it. Still it bent, fuller and fuller, lower and lower. The man evidently strained with desperate strength, defeating, perhaps, with the clumsiness of anxiety, the end in view; when, too impatient, apparently, to witness their urgent peril without lending his aid, the figure of Captain H---- rose up; in one instant a piercing scream was borne faintly to shore--the boat whelmed over, and all were in the water.
For a few dreadful seconds nothing was seen of the unhappy creatures; then a cap floated, and then two struggling figures rose to the surface. One was evidently the child, for his cap was off, and his fair hair was seen; the other head was covered. This latter buffeted the waters with all the violence of a helpless, drowning man; then he threw his arms above his head, sank, and rose no more. The boy struggled less and less, and seemed dead to all resistance before he sank, too. The boat floated keel upward, almost within reach of the sufferers; and now that the waters had closed over them, the third figure was observed, for the first time, at a considerable distance, slowly and laboriously swimming toward it, and in a few moments two arms were flung over it, and there he hung. It was one of those scenes which the heart quails to look on, yet which chains the spectator to the spot. The whole had passed in less than a minute: fear--despair--agony--and death, had been pressed into one of those short minutes, of which so many pass without our knowing how. It is well. Idleness, vanity, or vice--all that dismisses thought--may dally with time, but the briefest space is too long for that excess of consciousness where time seems to stand still.