With mad haste Esmé tore off her skirt and sprang into the sea, clutching at the sinking child. She caught him as he came up for the third time, and swam back holding him. But the black sides towered sheer and straight four feet above her; the seaweed gave as she caught it; the child was a dead weight on one arm, and she had hurt the other jumping in.
"Get help," she cried. "Get help, Denise."
Denise lay on the sands, shrieking, half-unconscious, useless and helpless.
"They'll drown! Go for help, Estelle. I may get down to them in time." Bertie swung over the edge of the cliff, beginning a perilous climb.
Another rescuer went hurrying too.
"It's Cyrrie! My Cyrrie, dwownin'."
Baby Cecil left his castle, began to patter out along the rock, sobbing as he ran. "Wait, Cyrrie, wait! I tumin' to help. Oh, my Cyrrie!"
Half-way down Bertie knew that he ought to have run on to the path. Sometimes he hung and thought he could go no further, then dropped and scrambled, and caught some point which saved him. He was still too high up to jump when he came to a jutting ledge and could see no way on. There, Esmé, clinging, slipping, as she called for help, looked up and saw him.
"Bertie!" she said. "You followed me."
She stopped calling out, clutched a new piece of seaweed and grew strangely quiet.