It was Marianne.
It was she who had moored the boat with the lantern and was on her way back to her hut when she heard a woman scream twice. She stopped as suddenly as if she had been shot at, straining her eyes in the direction the sound came from—she knew that there was no worse spot in the bay, a semi-floating solution of mud veined with quicksand. She knew, too, how far the incoming tide had reached, for she had just left it at her bare heels by way of a winding narrow causeway with a hard shell bottom that led to the marsh. She did not call for help, for she knew what lay before her and there was not a second to lose. The next instant, she had sprung out on the treacherous slime, running for a life in the fast-deepening glaze of water.
"Lie down!" she shouted. Then her feet touched a solid spot caked with shell and grass. Here she halted for an instant to listen—a choking groan caught her ear.
"Lie down!" she shouted again and sprang forward. She knew the knack of running on that treacherous slime.
She leapt to a patch of shell and listened again. The woman was choking not ten yards ahead of her, almost within reach of a thin point of matted grass running back of the marsh, and there she found her, and she was still breathing. With her great strength she slid her to the point of grass. It held them both. Then she lifted her bodily in her arms, swung her on her back and ran splashing knee-deep in water to solid ground.
"Sacré bon Dieu!" she sobbed as she staggered with her burden. "C'est ma belle petite!"
For weeks Yvonne lay in the hut of the worst vagabond of Pont du Sable. So did a mite of humanity with black eyes who cried and laughed when he pleased. And Marianne fished for them both, alone and single-handed, wrenching time and time again comforts from the sea, for she would allow no one to go near them, not even such old friends as Monsieur le Curé and myself—that old hag, with her clear blue eyes, who walks with the stride of a man, and who looks at you squarely, at times disdainfully—even when drunk.
