"We seem to be living in spasms just now," she said. "We certainly crowd a good deal of excitement into a very few minutes."
The catamaran swung round and grated on the shingle. Marcel was in a hurry.
"Are you ready?" asked De Sylva, bending toward Iris.
"Yes," she said.
"Then you had better kneel behind Marcel, and steady yourself by placing your hands on his shoulders. Yes, that is it. Do not change your position until you are ashore. Now you, Mr. Hozier."
Marcel murmured something.
"Ah, good!" cried De Sylva softly. "Domingo, too, has secured a catamaran. He is bringing it at once in order to save time."
A second spectral figure emerged from the gloom. Without waiting for further instructions, Marcel swung his paddle, and the one craft passed the other in the center of the pool. Iris felt Hozier's hands on her waist. He obeyed orders, and uttered no sound, but the action told her that she might trust him implicitly. When the narrow cleft was traversed, and she saw the open sea on her right, there was ample need for some such assurance of guardianship. Viewed from the cliff, the swell that broke on the half-submerged reef was of slight volume, but it presented a very different and most disconcerting aspect when seen in profile. It seemed to be an almost impossible feat for any man to propel three narrow planks, top-heavy with a human freight, across a wide channel through which such a sea was running. Indeed, Hozier himself, sailor as he was, felt more than doubtful as to the fate of their argosy. But Marcel paddled ahead with unflagging energy once he was clear of the tortuous passage, and, before the catamaran had traveled many yards, even Iris was able to understand that the outlying ridge of rocks both protected their present track and created much of the apparent turmoil.
At last the raft, for it was little else, bore sharply out between two huge bowlders that might well have fallen from the mighty pile of Grand-père itself. Pointed and angular they were, and set like a gateway to an abode of giants. Beyond, there was a shimmer of swift-moving water, with a silver mist on the surface, though from a height of a few feet it would have been easy to distinguish the bold contours of Fernando Noronha itself.
Marcel plied his paddle vigorously, and Iris thought they were heading against the current, since there was a constant swirl of white-tipped waves on both sides of the curved plank, and her dress soon became soaked. But Hozier knew that one man could not drive a craft that had no artificial buoyancy in the teeth of a four-knot tidal stream. Marcel was edging across the channel, and making good use of the very force that threatened to sweep him away. Indeed, in less than five minutes, a definite clearing yet darkening of the atmospheric light showed that land was near. The hiss of the ripple subsided, the tide ceased its chant, and a dark mass sprang into uncanny distinctness right ahead.