"I could kiss the very rocks you have stood on," he said passionately.
She kissed him back and dropped the cloak, waited a second till a wave had swirled by, then launched into the slack of it, and was gone.
He stood long, peering and listening into the darkness, but heard only the welter of the water under the black ledges below, and its scornful hiss as it seethed through the fringing sea-weeds.
Then at last he turned and climbed, slowly and heavily, up to the ridge; for now he felt the strain of these last full hours, coming on top of the longer strain of the storm; and this, and the lack of proper feeding, made him feel weak and empty and weary. He knelt down there in the darkness, with his face towards the Race where Nance was battling with the hungry black waters, and he prayed for her safety as he had never prayed for anything in his life before.
"God keep her! God keep her! God keep her—and bring her safe to land! O God, keep her, keep her, keep her, and bring her safe to land!"
It was a monotonous little prayer, but all his heart was in it, and that is all that makes a prayer avail. And when at last, from sheer weariness, he sank down on to his heels in science, gazing earnestly out into the blackness of the night, his heart prayed on though his lips no longer moved.
Could anything have happened to her? Could the black waters have swallowed her?
Anything might have happened to her. The waters might have swallowed her, as they had Bernel.
The thoughts would surge up behind his prayer, but he prayed them down—again and again—and clung to his prayer and his hope.
It seemed hours since they parted, since his last glimpse of her as the black waters swallowed the slim white figure, and seemed to laugh scornfully at its smallness and weakness.