Page:The Romance of Isabel, Lady Burton.djvu/162

132 Among other places we ran over to Evian, twelve miles across on the opposite coast. There were one hundred and twenty-five people in the hotel, who were very kind, and made a great fuss with us; and we had great fun, though they had great difficulty in making room for us. Mr. Sykes had to go to an old tower in the garden, and my room was somewhere under the tiles. We often gave them supper and cigarettes at 11.30, after music and impromptu dancing in the evening. They were all vastly kind to us, and when we went away they came down to see us off in our cutter.

When we got half-way across the lake, I said to my brother-in-law, "Does it not look rather like wind out there?" He gave a short, quick command at once to take every bit of sail down; but we knew nothing of lake-sailing, though we knew sea-sailing, and before we had got it half down the wind came upon us like a wall, and threw us on our side. Our bobstay snapped like sealing-wax, our mainsail rent like ribbon, our foresail flew away, and she would not answer her helm, and we remained in the trough of the waves, which rose awfully high. We then cut away the jib. We had given up all hope, having beaten about for a long time, and two of us had been in the water for three-quarters of an hour. At length we spied five boats putting out to us, and we were truly thankful. It appeared that the fishermen had refused to come before, because they were convinced we had gone down long ago, and all the village people were on their knees praying for us. We were safely towed in by the five boats, much too disabled to help ourselves, and the cutter was smashed to pieces.