A touch, and you pass from one to the other." Hugh looked wildly round him.

The sun lay warm upon the tree-tops.

It could not be that he was going to die _here_ and _now_; here in the living sunshine, with the quiet, friendly faces of the hills all around him.
He strengthened his numb hold fiercely, all but lost it, regained it.
Cramp, long held at bay, overcame him.
And the boat kept turning in the twilight.

He reached the end of his strength, and held on beyond it.

He heard some one near at hand suffocating in long-drawn gasps.