Presently I felt Jerry start, and then he shuffled back a little so that he was quite tight against my knees. I asked him what was the matter, and he said “Nothing.” After a while, though, he said:
“Chris, I’d better tell you.”
“What? Oh, what is it?” I said.
“Do you remember how the tide was when we came out?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said; “on the ebb. Don’t you remember the rocks at Wecanicut, with bushels of wet sea-weed hanging off?”
“Well?” Jerry said.
I didn’t understand for a minute, then I whispered:
“Do—you mean—”
“A wave just hit my foot,” said Jerry in a low voice.
The first thing that we did was a lot of quick figuring. We thought fearfully hard and remembered that Turkshead Rock was just coming out of water when we left Wecanicut at four o’clock, so that the tide must have been within about an hour of ebb. Therefore full flood would be at eleven o’clock. But we hadn’t any idea of whether it was ten or eleven or twelve, because there was no light to see Jerry’s watch by. He had just an ordinary Ingersoll, not the grand Radiolite kind that you can see in the dark and it was perfectly maddening to hear it ticking away cheerfully, and no good to us at all. Just then something cold wrapped itself around my ankle. It was the edge of another wavelet.