From the beach (that seemed now so awfully distant) not a soul seemed to observe her terrible predicament.
From being shrill and continuous, her despairing shrieks became hoarse and faint, and, worse than all, the wind seemed to sweep them seaward. Wild and black despair, with the terror of immediate death, filled her heart. What terrible retribution was this? Was she to perish by drowning—to die the same death that Robert Wodrow had died—to perish and leave poor Mary alone in the world—all alone!
She parted the rich brown hair from her brow, and, casting her eyes upward to the flushed evening sky, prayed for strength to die, and for submission to the will of heaven; and, even as she prayed, a wave that rolled nearly to her knees made her stagger. The sandy knoll was completely covered, and the water was rising fast.
A very few minutes more and she would be swept off her feet, to sink and drown! Across the waters of the broad river, the red sun, now level with them and the flat horizon, shed his dazzling rays into her eyes, that were becoming half-blinded by the rising spoon drift torn from the waves by the storm.
It all seemed an unreality—a horrid nightmare.
She heard, or imagined she heard, a cry of encouragement—of coming succour; but, blinded by terror and despair, she knew not whence it came, whether from the land or the water.
A numbness seemed to creep fast over her—a sensation, or rather the want of it, that threatened speedily to paralyse alike thought and feeling.
Human endurance, in the weak and delicate form of the girl, could stand no more; an incoming wave, stronger than the rest, struck her above the waist, and she fell backwards into the water, and, as the latter rose over her head, her senses left her, and darkness closed around her.
Anon she breathed again, and the light flashed into her eyes. She found herself in a boat, encircled by the strong and protecting arm of a man, and closed her eyes with an invocation to heaven, believing that she was being rowed shoreward, for she could hear the regular dash of the oar-blades, and the hard breathing of those who pulled them; but she remained passive and voiceless, with closed eyes, incapable of volition, almost of thought, and certainly of speech.
After a brief space the boat jarred against something. It was the side of a vessel, and she felt herself lifted upward—up—up—and placed in the arms of a man, whose exclamation gave her a species of electric shock.