"My ankle pains me. I don't think I can walk."
While thus speaking she chanced to look upward at the ladder hanging far above her head, and then, lowering her eyes to the flowing sea, she suddenly took in the full peril of their position.
"The tide! the tide!" she murmured, clasping her hands. "We are lost."
"We certainly mustn't remain here. And if you cannot walk I must carry you."
Idris' cheerful and brisk air did not deceive her. Glancing from left to right she saw the futility of his proposal as well as he saw it himself.
The contour of the shore formed a semicircular bay many miles in length, and its sands were lined by a wall of lofty perpendicular cliffs without a single gap to break their continuity. Idris and his companion were standing somewhere near the centre of this curve. The tide, extending in a straight line across the bay, had now closed in upon the extreme points of the arc-like sweep, and was still advancing, covering the sand and reducing at each moment the extent of their standing room. Before Idris could have carried her half-a-mile the sea would be breaking many feet deep upon the base of the cliffs.
"You cannot save me," said Mademoiselle Rivière, a sudden calmness coming over her. "It is impossible. You must leave me and try to save yourself."
The gentle maiden, whom a harsh word melts to tears, will often face death with fortitude, the great crisis evoking all the latent heroism of her nature. So it was now, and Idris, looking into the depth of Mademoiselle Rivière's steadfast eyes, caught a glimpse of how those Christian women may have looked who faced martyrdom in the pagan days of old. Strange that a maiden, seemingly so good and brave, should have excited the aversion of Beatrice!
"If you die, I die with you," said Idris. "But I have no intention of letting either you or myself die. There is a way of escape open to us."