The sand shelved down into a little bay which was about a hundred yards across. Great rocks crowded down into the water on either side. The place was embowered in trees and bushes. It was an ideal spot for a quiet dip. Both lads slipped off their clothes and entered the water.
The sea was perfect. Charlie, who wasn’t much on aquatics, paddled about near shore, but Bill soon found himself at the mouth of the bay. Swimming strongly, with an easy crawl stroke, he revelled in the electric chill of the water and the cloudless sky and sunshine. A short distance ahead of him, a huge brown rock jutted up from the water like a buoy. He swam to it and clambered up on its groined shoulder, slippery with endless laving of the sea. Standing upright, he gazed about.
Up and down the beach, the tumbled rocks were belted with trees for some miles. Beyond the trees, so far as he could see, were the bare, sharp outlines of tall cliffs overhanging the water. Picturesque enough, thought Bill, but immeasurably lonesome. Out to sea an island lay off the coast, a mile, perhaps two miles away. He could not judge accurately, for it is difficult to decide distance from the level of the water. He remembered seeing it the day before, from the air. As he remembered it, it was a small, rocky, barren-looking place, with a single house on it, though he hadn’t been absolutely certain about the house. He stared in that direction for a minute or two. As he turned about, ready to dive in and return to shore, there was a sharp thud on the rock at his feet.
Bill looked down, but saw nothing—The next moment he heard, or imagined he heard, something go past his ear with a whistling sound. He gazed toward the beach, more than a little disturbed. Nothing could be seen but Charlie sitting naked on the sand. There was no stir of bush, not a movement of grass. And yet again above his head—and this time closer—there was a harsh z-z-z-p! of a bullet.
Bill heard no sound of an explosion, but suddenly he saw Charlie spring to his feet, snatch up his clothes and dart into the underbrush. The only conclusion he could reach, as he stood on the sea-washed rock, hurriedly collecting his thoughts, was that someone concealed ashore was shooting at him with a powerful air-gun.
Without a second’s further hesitation, he flopped into the water. He had intended to swim back to the little bay, but now he hastily changed his mind. To return in that direction while the bullets were flying was like asking for a sudden and unpleasant end to his existence. So he struck out to sea, meaning to make a detour and go ashore at some secluded spot a little further down the coast.
He was swimming with his head submerged in the water, in order to conceal his whereabouts if possible from the beach. When he turned on his back to take his bearings, he remembered Charlie’s warning about the current. It seemed to him as he glanced back to the rock where he had stood, that he had covered a great distance in a very short time, even allowing for the extra speed due to his excitement and wrath over the unknown marksman’s attempt to drop him in the water with a bullet. He fixed his eyes on a point on the shore and struck out with all his might.
At first Bill could not believe that his tremendous efforts were achieving—nothing. But gradually, after a fierce fight of more than a quarter of an hour’s duration, the truth broke upon him. His distance from the beach was not lessening at all, but was swiftly increasing. He could battle as he liked against it, but the tide was stronger, stronger than he. There was no shadow of doubt in his mind that he was being carried out to sea.
It was difficult to meet the situation calmly, but Bill tried to quiet the surge of pain that was sucking the strength from his limbs. It looked as though only a miracle would save him now. He turned on his back, and for a moment a ray of hope sent a warm glow through his veins. He was being borne out on the tide, toward the island! It might be possible to force a landing there.
Now that seemed his only prospect of life. With all the vigor he could summon, Bill struck across the current. But when he paused in exhaustion to observe his progress, he saw that it was useless. He had already been swept past the island. It was out of his range.