"We're over the reef!" he exclaimed to himself. "But what's beyond?"
That was the question. If there were land he knew that he would have to contend with the dreaded undertow, and already well-nigh exhausted the prospect was not inviting. But if there were no land—? He shuddered to think of that possibility, when, drifting farther and farther from the lee of the reef into a boundless waste of tempestuous water, nothing but a slow death by drowning confronted all the crew of the luckless life-boat. He wondered, too, what fate had befallen Mostyn and Jasper. The latter had gone, no doubt dashed against the reef that had let Alwyn and Hilda down so lightly. And Mostyn? He had seen nothing of him. Whether he leapt with the others or was crushed under the wreckage of the life-boat there was no telling.
"'Tany rate," muttered Burgoyne, tightening his grip upon his now senseless burden, "we're going to make a good old fight for it. Now, then!"
Borne just in front of a huge wave that was on the point of breaking, the man and the girl were projected towards the unknown; submerged, twisted about and rolled helplessly in the smother of agitated water. Then Burgoyne's feet touched ground—sand, by the feel of it.
For another twenty yards he felt himself being impelled forward. Then his feet found a grip, but only for a brief instant. The horrible undertow—the back lash from the breaking waves—was commencing.
Planting his heels deeply in the yielding sand and gripping Hilda with both arms he braced himself to withstand the retrograde movement. Slipping slowly and surely he resisted strenuously, but with every remaining effort of his sorely-taxed strength. Like a mill-stream the creamy-white foam receded, until Burgoyne's head and shoulders emerged.
The next instant he saw the rearing crest of another huge wave about to break. There was no avoiding it. He was still too deeply immersed to hope to stagger even a few yards from its impending grip.
Down it crashed. Rolled over and over, with the breath well-nigh dashed out of his body, Burgoyne and his burden were swept onward for yet another fifty yards... back twenty, and then almost by a miracle his disengaged hand clutched and held a piece of rock.
Ten seconds later his prostrate form was uncovered by the receding undertow. With the frenzy of despair he regained his feet, and bending low under the weight of his burden—he was now carrying Hilda across his back like a sack of flour, but how he managed it he had not the slightest idea—he staggered rather than ran up the shelving, yielding sand until he dimly remembered stumbling blindly against the trunk of a tree.
Driven by the instincts of self-preservation and the desperate determination to save his charge, Burgoyne staggered another half a dozen yards inland and collapsed like a wet rag upon the wind and spray-swept ground.