But Elsie was fascinated. She felt at once that the body she held was solid, though soft and yielding, and so she clung to the long rake-handle with all her might. The conflict was over in a few moments. The waters retired defeated, and left upon the sands a dark, limp, saturated body.
"Come away, come away!" shrieked the boy, as Elsie was cautiously advancing towards the mysterious object. The girl stood still, and hesitated a moment, while a vague dread crept over her. What was it that lay there in the bleak, cold twilight, so still and shapeless, and yet with such an awful suggestion of life about it? She was lost in bewilderment when the boy's voice recalled her—
"Elsie, Elsie, mind the wave!"
She had but a moment in which to spring back, as the third giant, towering above its predecessors, lifted the inert body on its crest, and flung it contemptuously high up upon the shore. Then the waters swept back and left the two children shivering alone on the strand: behind them were the dull, dead heaps of sea-weed, and at their feet a black mass of clothing. The children clung together in silent awe. Neither of them had ever seen a dead body. Hitherto death had been an abstraction, but now they felt themselves face to face with the reality.
A strange waif of the sea.
"Let's run and look for father," suggested Jim, in a frightened whisper.
"We can't leave her alone, Jim," responded the girl, now pale and grave as she had never been before, and looking from the body to the line of foaming water but a few feet beyond; "the tide might turn and take her away again."
"I wish it had not brought her!" gasped Jim, through his chattering teeth.