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“What are they doing?” Olympia asks.

“It is for the breeches buoy,” Catherine answers.

A signal flare lights up the wounded vessel. A woman falls soundlessly from the rigging, and someone on the beach screams. Catherine turns to Olympia and pulls her toward her, as if to shield her face. But Olympia is taller than Catherine, and the embrace is cumbersome and mildly awkward; so they separate and watch as a man is swamped by a cresting wave.

“My God,” Catherine says.

So sheltered has Olympia’s life been up to this point that she has never seen death, nor anything resembling it. She flinches at the sudden boom of the gun. She watches as a ball with a rope attached spools out across the waves and lands behind the ship. A taut line is immediately established from the shipwreck to the shore. One of the men in lifesaving dress steps into the breeches buoy, a device that resembles nothing so much, Olympia thinks, as a large pair of men’s pants attached to a wash line. As the men on shore haul the line through a pulley, the officer makes slow progress toward the vessel, his legs dangling unceremoniously just inches above the surf.

At the water’s edge, John Haskell and Olympia’s father take hold of the stern of the lifesaving boat and run it into the water. Her father’s face is grave, his features wholly concentrated. The sash of his dressing gown has come undone, and Olympia is surprised to see, as she seldom does, his thin white legs. Although Olympia is embarrassed for his body, she is nevertheless proud of her father’s strength in this matter: Haskell and her father seem oblivious to any possible discomfort from the wind or the sea or their endeavors as they both join in the effort to pull the line. Later Olympia and Catherine will learn that the ship, which was called the Mary Dexter and carried Norwegian immigrants, sustained damage at the docks in Quebec; but the captain, too eager to finish the journey, unwisely left before repairs could be made.

Catherine and Olympia watch as the breeches buoy returns along the line, not with the man who only moments ago traversed it, but rather with the slumped form of a woman who is in turn carrying a child.

“She will drop the child,” Catherine exclaims.

Those at the shoreline must have the same fear, for Haskell sheds his dressing gown and wades into the surf in his nightshirt to snatch the feet of the cargo. When he has the woman in his grasp, he brings her onto dry ground and, with the aid of Rufus Philbrick, disentangles her from the contraption. Another officer steps into the buoy and sets off for the wounded ship.

“I must go to him,” Catherine says. “Will you be all right here?”

“Yes, yes, of course,” Olympia says. “I am fine.”

Olympia watches as Catherine Haskell runs against the wind toward her husband. While Olympia’s father attends to the female passenger, wrapping her in a blanket Josiah has brought to the scene, John Haskell lays the child immediately upon a rug and begins to administer lifesaving breaths. Olympia watches as Catherine puts a hand to her husband’s back, and he looks up at her. He tells her something, perhaps gives her instructions, for she immediately takes charge of the woman Olympia’s father has been attending to. Haskell, apparently having restored the child’s breathing, scoops the girl into his arms and begins to walk briskly with her toward the house. Olympia inhales sharply. For she can see that in order to get to the house, he will have to pass by the place where she is standing at the perimeter of the rescue effort.

Her hair blows all about her face, and she has to hold it back to see him. He carries the child close to him, but flat, level with the ground, his arms cradling her underneath. He does not pause, he cannot stop now, but he nevertheless looks directly at Olympia as he passes her. It is only a moment, because he is moving fast. Perhaps she speaks his name, not John but rather Haskell, which is how she has come to think of him. And in an