We were nearly spent when we overtook her. She had stopped where the foam from the breakers lay thick upon the sand.
"Listen!" she said.
We heard nothing but our thumping hearts and the raucous note of some sea-bird.
"He answered me!" she asserted with conviction. "There!"
Certainly my ears caught a faint cry to the left. We ran on, forgetting our bruises. Again Angela called, and out of the mist beyond the breakers came an answering voice. We shouted back and plunged into the surf. Angela knelt down upon the sand.
Afterwards we admitted that Angela had saved his life, although Jim could not have fought his way through the breakers without our help. Indeed, when we got him ashore, I made certain that he was dead. Had Angela's instinct or intuition failed, had she hesitated for a few minutes, Jim would have drowned within a few hundred yards of the spot where the balloon struck. Since, Jim has maintained that he was sinking when he heard her voice; her faint, attenuated tones infused strength into his limbs and hope into his heart.
We dined together, and I delivered the president's message in Thorpe's presence. He shook hands with Jim, and said quietly--
"I am happier to-night than I ever expected to be again."
Bounder or not, he meant it.
Only the other day I received a letter from Angela. She wrote at length concerning her eldest child, my godson, and she mentioned incidentally that Jim was now cashier of the San Lorenzo Bank.