She looked back on the beach as a huge wave raised her aloft with her burden, and wondered if she could make it. It seemed a great way off.
“Of course you can, Jane Pellew! Keep your mouth shut and breathe through your nose; don’t fight the waves but let them take you in. Think of the skates’ eggs that are thrown up on the sands, how fragile they are and still safe. Think of Breck! Think of Father and Jack and poor Aunt Min! Think of Lorna and what it will mean to Breck’s father to have his child safe. Poor man!”
Holding Lorna’s head above water as much as possible, she began her perilous trip ashore. She must time each wave and endeavor to ride it instead of being overcome by it. Many times she and Frances had played the game of saving each other and she was thankful for the skill she had acquired. But she found it quite a different thing saving Frances who inadvertently helped herself somewhat and saving this poor limp girl who flopped so piteously and whose head was so hard to keep above water.
“If Breck would only come!” her heart cried out.
Among the crowd that gathered on the beach there were many good swimmers but, as sometimes happens in a crowd, a strange panic had seized them. The run in the loose sand from the bathing beach proper had winded most of them too and men and women stood shuddering and watched the black-eyed girl make her fight.
“She will win! She will win!” they comforted themselves by saying.
“Lord! what pluck!”
“Who is it—the drowned girl?”
“Preston Breckenridge’s daughter. He’s the multimillionaire from California.”
“Money won’t help him much now.”