The tide was low, as the girl had said, and the jagged rocks on which the bones of the ship lay stranded, stood black and prominent above the smooth water. The inner reefs were high and dry, and upon the slippery corrugations of the rocks, covered with seaweed and encrusted with shell-fish, the two walked; the Maori girl barefooted and agile, the Englishman heavily shod and clumsy.
Seeing the difficulty of Scarlett’s advance, Amiria held out her hand to him, and so linked they approached the sea. A narrow belt of water separated them from the reef on which the wreck lay, and to cross this meant immersion.
“The tide is not as low as I thought,” said Amiria. “At low spring-tide you can walk, almost dry-shod, to the other side.”
“I’m afraid we can’t reach it without a ducking,” said Scarlett.
“But you can swim?”
Scarlett laughed. “It’s hardly good enough to ride home in wet clothes.” He divined Amiria’s meaning, but pretended otherwise.
Then she laughed, too. “But I have a plan,” she said. Without a word more, she threw off her flax cape and dropped into the water. A few strokes and she had reached the further reef. “It will be all right,” she cried, “I think I can ferry you across on a raft.”
She walked over the sharp rocks as though her feet were impervious, and clambering through a great rent in the vessel’s side, she disappeared.
When next Jack caught sight of her she was perched on the top of the battered poop, whence she called, “I’ll roll a cask over the rocks, and get you across. There’s a big chest in the saloon that belongs to you.”
She disappeared again, and when Jack next saw her, she was rolling a huge barrel with difficulty towards the channel.