Indifferent to the clogging sand, impervious to the scratch and snag, stumbling over wreckage, dodging through palmetto, unconscious of her breathlessness, unhampered by her loneliness, fired only by a strange sort of exhilaration, a weird new sense of emancipation, she sped on through the excitant dark, till tripping suddenly on some horrid slimy thing like the dead body of a shark she pitched over head-first into a tangle of beach- grass, and crawling out on all fours into the clean, sweet sand again, crawled into the spurting flash of a revolver shot whose bullet just barely grazed the wincing lobe of her ear.
Tight as a vise a man's arms closed around her! 154
"My God!" gasped a man's voice, "I thought you were a panther or a bear—or something!"
Struggling to free herself Daphne snatched her small flash-light from her pocket and flamed it full on the man's face.
"Why—what the—the dickens?" she babbled hysterically. "Why— how in the world?" she rallied desperately. "Well—I should think Martha had 'got something!' Why—why, it's the—the Kissing Man!" she cried.
With widening eyes and a dropped jaw the man returned the stare.
"Y—you?" he stammered.
Fumbling round through the sand for his own larger lantern he flashed a steadier flare of light upon the scene.
"What—are—you—doing here—and crawling on your hands and knees?" he asked. His face was ashy gray.
"Why, I'm running away!" glowed Daphne. Her eyes were like stars, the flush in her cheeks flaunting and flaming like a rose-colored flag.