“And does the ‘breeze o’ wind’ always leave such a swell as that?” Judith asked, as a wave crashed shoreward.
“’Most always, after a no’theaster. There’ll be a heavy undertow to-day. Wouldn’t try any salt-water bathin’, if I was you.”
When Judith faced the sea again, she was surprised to see how the tide appeared to have risen in so short a time, and how much further in the waves were breaking. One came so near to where Gerald, still intent on his pyramid, dug steadily, that she called out to him. Her voice, however, was completely drowned in the roar of the surf. With a slight stirring of alarm she left the path and hurried forward.
She had covered half the distance which separated them when her breath stopped, as though it had been blown back down her throat. To her terrified eyes the ocean seemed suddenly to lift and hurl itself landward. Such waves are not uncommon on the Massachusetts or Maine coasts after a northeast storm, with an incoming tide. Their force can seldom be calculated.
It lifted Gerald as though he had been a chip of wood, carrying him inland for several yards. Then came the relentless clutch of the undertow.
To Judith it was as though the very heart in her body was being battered and bruised as she watched those small hands vainly battling against that seething flood, while the wooden spade he had so recently grasped floated almost to her feet. If the child were caught under into the next wave, it seemed as though all life must be crushed out of him when it crashed upon the shore. For a sickening moment everything turned black before her eyes, but she fought off the faintness, crying aloud,
“Oh, Thou ‘very present help’—now—now—now!”
And then, with a sob of thankfulness, she saw that a man, strong and supple, was beating his way through the water. He reached the boy, grasped him and held him high in his arms. When the wave broke, the man’s head was submerged, but the boy’s was not.
The mighty volume of water lifted Gilbert Graham even as its predecessor had lifted Gerald; but, as the force of the wave spent itself, he realized with a throb of thankfulness that his feet touched bottom, for, as he had once told the boy, he was not an expert swimmer. Then came the rush of the undertow.
It seemed as though his body must yield before it, burdened as he was with the child. As he braced his strong shoulders against the flood his whole being was a cry for strength. All at once, this thing became to him symbolic. It was not alone for the boy’s life that he fought, but for his own manhood. If he could stand firm now without relaxing his grip of the child, he felt that no wave of temptation, no subtle under-current of appeal could ever again sweep him off his feet or loosen his grasp on goodness and truth.