There seemed no interlude of time between the instant that I saw that splashing water and that in which I had plunged full into the gray depths myself. In reality there was a space of several seconds—the gray light showed me that the drama of the lagoon had progressed immeasurably further. The girl was fifty or sixty feet from the rock wall now, just her head showing above water, her arms locked tight about the plank and facing her approaching foe. And something that swam swiftly made streaming ripples toward her.
I swam with amazing ease and swiftness. The terror, innate love of life, were all forgotten in the hope that I might reach Edith’s side in time. And now, by the gray light of dawn, I saw that her foe was upon her.
They were struggling with a desperate frenzy, and for an instant the splashing water almost obscured them. The plank had been torn from her grasp, and by some circumstance had been sped hopelessly out of her reach. And now, the water clearing from my eyes, I could determine the identity of her assailant. No matter what further fate the lagoon had in store for her, this foe was human, at least. Terrible and drawn with passion as it was, I saw the face of Major Kenneth Dell, the man who had disappeared the preceding night.
I yelled, trying to give hope. Already I was almost upon them; and Dell had released his hold of the girl. Whatever had been his purpose it had been forgotten in the face of some greater extremity. Their fight was no more with each other: rather they seemed at death grips with some resistless foe that tore at them from beneath the waves.
I saw Dell’s face. An unspeakable terror, that of one who in wickedness goes down to an awful death, was on his face. It was such a terror as men can know but once, for they never live to tell of it, and which blasts the heart of any one that beholds it. No artist, delving into the abnormal, could have portrayed that fear. It was a thing never to forget, but ever to see again in dreams.
Edith was terrified too, but such a terror as Dell knew was impossible for her. The fear of death that curses a godless man is perhaps the most dreadful retributive force in this world or the next, and Dell knew it to the full. No one who had seen his face could doubt but that all the iniquity of a long life had been atoned for, in one little moment, in the scales of justice. But only a measure of it could oppress her. The only fear that her fine young soul could know was that born of the elemental love of life. And with what seemed to be a final effort she raised her head to call a warning to me.
But even if I had heeded it, it would have come too late. I saw the heads of the man and woman in front of me go down as if drawn by quicksand. And there was no escape for me. The death that dwelt in the lagoon had already seized me in its resistless grasp.
But the guard over Jason’s treasure was not merely some monster implanted from the sea, a mortal thing that years could claim or muscular strength oppose. Rather it was a power that had dwelt there since the world’s young days, ever claiming tribute, and which would continue on until the very sea itself was changed. The demon that had hold of me was merely that of rushing waters. They swept me forward and sucked me down with remorseless force.
There was a sink-hole in the floor of the lagoon. No wonder the water that rushed in at high-tide had seemed to go so quietly away. I was being carried down a subterranean outlet, through some water passage under the rock wall, and into the open sea.