"Can't turn now," she muttered. "Wave hit her side, turn over quick."
Sam looked ashore again. For upwards of a furlong off the edge of the flats the breakers were ruling their parallel lines of white. Above all the other noises of the storm the continuous roaring of these waters reached their ears.
"You could land there," he suggested. "What if we did get turned out? It's shallow."
She was not going to tell him the real reason she could not land. "I lose my boat," she muttered.
"Better lose the boat than lose yourself," he muttered sullenly.
Bela did not answer this. She paddled doggedly, and Sam bailed. He saw her glance from time to time toward a certain point inland. Seeing her face change, he followed the direction of her eyes, and presently distinguished, far across the flats, three tiny horses with riders appearing from among the trees.
They were proceeding in single file around the bay. Even at the distance one could guess they were galloping. So that was why she would not land!
Sam did not need to be told who the three riders were. His sensations on perceiving them were mixed. It was not difficult for him to figure what had happened when his absence had been discovered, and he was not at all sure that he wished to escape from his mysterious captor only to fall into those hands.
This line of thought suddenly suggested a possible reason why he had been carried off—but it was too humiliating to credit. He looked at her with a kind of shamed horror. Her face gave nothing away.
By and by Sam realized with a blessed lightening of the heart that the storm had reached its maximum. The gusts were no longer increasing in strength; less water was coming over the bow. Not until he felt the relief was he aware of how frightened he had been.