It was a tragic figure, with gestures and voice to match. But it was evident that the Captain had taken his own measure mistakenly. In him the French stage had lost a comedian of the first magnitude. Much, therefore, we felt, was to be condoned in one who doubtless felt so great a talent itching for expression. When next he smiled, we had revived to a keener appreciation of baffled genius ever on the scent for the capture of that fickle goddess, opportunity.
The captain's smile was oiling a further word of explanation. "See, mesdames, they come! they will soon land you on the beach!"
He was pointing to a boat smaller than our own, that now ran alongside. There had been frequent signallings between the two boats, a running up and down of a small yellow flag which we had thought amazingly becoming to the marine landscape, until we learned the true relation of the flag to the treachery aboard our own craft.
"You see, mesdames," smoothly continued our talented traitor, "you see how the waves run up on the beach. We could never, with this great sail, run in there. We should capsize. But behold, these are bathers, accustomed to the water—they will carry you—but as if you were feathers!" And he pointed to the four outstretched, firmly-muscled arms, as if to warrant their powers of endurance. The two men had left their boat; it was dancing on the water, at anchor. They were standing immovable as pillars of stone, close to the gunwales of our craft. They were holding out their arms to us.
Charm suddenly stood upright. She held out her hands like a child, to the least impressionable boatman. In an instant she was clasping his bronze throat.
"All my life I've prayed for adventure. And at last it has come!" This she cried, as she was carried high above the waves.
"That's right, have no fear," answered her carrier as he plunged onward, ploughing his way through the waters to the beach.
Beneath my own feet there was a sudden swish and a swirl of restless, tumbling waters. The motion, as my carrier buried his bared legs in the waves, was such as accompanies impossible flights described in dreams, through some unknown medium. The surging waters seemed struggling to submerge us both; the two thin, tanned legs of the fisherman about whose neck I was clinging, appeared ridiculously inadequate to cleave a successful path through a sea of such strength as was running shoreward.
"Madame does not appear to be used to this kind of travelling," puffed out my carrier, his conversational instinct, apparently, not in the least dampened by his strenuous plunging through the spirited sea. "It happens every day—all the aristocrats land this way, when they come over by the little boats. It distracts and amuses them, they say. It helps to kill the ennui."
"I should think it might, my feet are soaking; sometimes wet feet—"