He read nothing into the request save a natural desire that she should be prepared for the worst and try to cross the Great Divide with a prayer on her lips. The pitiful words helped to dispel the cloud which had befogged his wits, and he began to weigh the pros and cons of the forlornest of forlorn hopes.
The water was lapping their feet. The rock arched outward over their heads. Between the spot where they stood and the actual wall of rock there was already a flowing stream.
He looked at his watch. The hour was seven o’clock, and he estimated the time of high-water at about half-past seven. Then, as when he was lying along the foremast of the Southern Cross amid the thunders of the reef, a tiny seed of hope sprang into life in his brain. If they could outlast the tide there was still a chance!
The very fact that this chaos of fallen cliff created a fearsome rapid in the tide-way showed that the passage must be fairly open during low water. If promptness in decision could enable a man to conquer a difficulty, Maseden was certainly not lacking in that attitude.
“Come!” he said. “Not for the first time, we must put our backs to the wall. We may find a good grip for our feet before the water mounts too high. The four of us must lace arms and cling together. I believe the tide will not rise above our knees. At any rate, we cannot be swept away easily. It is worth trying.”
She nodded. Turning to her sister, she explained Maseden’s scheme. Soon they were braced against the rock and facing valiantly their new ordeal.
In the Middle Ages, when a lust for inflicting torture infected some men like a cancerous growth, a favorite method of at once punishing and destroying an unfortunate enemy was to chain him in a dungeon to which a tidal river had access, and leave him there until the slow-rising flood drowned him.
They were in some such plight, self-chained to a rock, though not knowing when a sudden swirl of water might sweep them to speedy death.