As I passed, Alix caught my hand. She said nothing, but her eyes devoured me and her bosom heaved. I smiled.
"My Princess!" I whispered, and her soul was in her look.
"I can't see a sign of any one on board," said Legrand, with his hand over his eyes.
"Mademoiselle would not be awake yet. It can't be later than five," said Lane, who was much better to-day.
"I make it 5:30," said Legrand. "We have some time to ourselves if we have luck. After last night those fiends will sleep well and with easy consciences." He spoke grimly.
"Have everything ready," I called as I left. "We must not lose a chance or hazard anything."
"What do you think?" said Lane, in his old cheerful manner.
I quickly descended to the beach, threw off my coat, waistcoat, and boots, and tightened my belt. Then I waded into the sea. It was cold, and, when I first entered, struck a chill into me. But presently, as I walked out into the deepening waters, with the sparkling reflection of the sun in my eyes from a thousand facets of ripples, I began to grow warm. I reached water waist-high, and next moment I was swimming.
The tide sucked at me in a strong current, and soon, I perceived, would carry me across the Sea Queen's bows unless I made a struggle. The water was racing under me, and I felt that my strength was as nothing compared with it. I was thrown this way and that as the flood moved. My passage had been taken incredibly quick, and now I was conscious that I was past the level of the yacht, and I turned and battled back. So far as I could see, I made no impression on the space that separated me from her, and I began to despair of reaching the yacht. In my mind I revolved the possibility of going with the flood and trusting to work ashore at the tail of the island. If that were not practicable, I was lost, for I should be blown out to the open sea.
Just as these desperate reflections crossed my mind, the Sea Queen's stern, off which I was struggling, backed. She came round to the wind and jammed, so that the flutter of canvas which she still carried cracked above the voice of the seas. Then her nose swung right round upon me, with the bubble under her cutwater. It was almost as if she had sighted a doomed wretch and was come to his assistance. Her broadside now broke the tide for me, and I began to see that I was creeping up to her, and, thus encouraged, step by step made my way until at last I reached her, and by the aid of a trailing sheet got aboard. It had been half an hour since I left the island.