"Pshaw! it's only over shoe, now, and my feet are wet already. I'll dash through; 'twon't take but three minutes, and I can't wait!"
He sprang on, thinking to clear the short strip, which the tide had covered, with a few bounds. A wave, high and broad, which had been gathering power and volume in all its long, onward course, came sweeping thunderingly in and engulfed him.
CHAPTER X.
In the Sea
oll's presence of mind enabled him to clutch the jagged sides of the rock desperately, so that in the wave's return he was not drawn with it into the sea depths. Stunned, strangled, half blinded, and impelled by a sudden horror of death in the cold, treacherous sea, he took two or three forward steps, fell, then rose and strove to struggle on. But a little hollow in the path let him down into the flood to his waist. The spray flew into his eyes and mouth, and breathless and bewildered he fell again, this time to disappear under the foam-flecked water. He struggled up to air and life at last, with many gasps for breath, and once more clutched at the rocks behind him. It all seemed like the terror of a dream, not real and threatening. Was he to be drowned? Some sudden thought of the pleasantness of life, of dear friends across this same cruel, ravenous sea, of Uncle Richard and his warning, came to him here. To be drowned in this dark, chill, raging flood? Oh! no, no! Then he saw, out in the gloom and mistiness, the white gleaming of a wave-crest, rising and sinking, but sweeping steadily toward him, and knew that it would dash upon his narrow foothold. Could he survive another?
Then from Noll's lips came a shrill cry, which rose above the thunder and battering of the sea; and, whether from terror or whether from the fact that the dear name was so warm and vivid in his heart at that moment, the cry was not "Help!" but, "Papa, papa!"
The cry was answered!—at least, Noll fancied it was, and clung to the jagged edges of rock with a new love of life in his heart, and, with his eyes on the approaching wave, which began to loom up dark and vast, cried out again with all his might.