To relax the swollen fingers that grasped the life-line was pure torture.
He attempted no further communication. None, indeed, was needed. It was plain that she understood their situation.
Some minutes passed before he became aware that they were closing in quickly to the shelving beach—so swiftly, indeed, that there was reason to believe the onward urge of the waves measurably reënforced by a shoreward set of current. But if they had managed to escape the greater fury on the weather side of the point, they had still a strong and angry surf to reckon with. Only a little way ahead, breakers were flaunting their white manes, while the thunder of their breaking was as the thundering of ten thousand hoofs.
Whitaker looked fearfully again at the woman. But she was unquestionably competent to care for herself. Proof of this he had in the fact that she had contrived to slip the life-preserver up over her head and discard it altogether. Thus disencumbered, she had more freedom for the impending struggle.
He glanced over his shoulder. They were on the line of breakers. Behind them a heavy comber was surging in, crested with snow, its concave belly resembling a vast sheet of emerald. In another moment it would be upon them. It was the moment a seasoned swimmer would seize.
