She lay there, breathing fast and deep, dripping with spray. I had no power of speech left, but when I rose wearily to my knees and looked out upon the water my blood ran cold. Above the ocean, on the breast of the roaring wind, three enormous birds sailed, turning and wheeling among each other; and below, drifting with the gray stream of the Gulf loop, a colossal bulk lay half submerged—a gigantic lizard, floating belly upward.
Then Daisy crept kneeling to my side and touched me, trembling from head to foot.
"I know," I muttered. "I must run back for the rifle."
"And—and leave me?"
I took her by the hand, and we dragged ourselves through the wire grass to the open end of a boiler lying in the sand.
She crept in on her hands and knees, and called to me to follow.
"You are safe now," I cried. "I must go back for the rifle."
"The birds may—may attack you."
"If they do I can get into one of the other boilers," I said. "Daisy, you must not venture out until I come back. You won't, will you?"
"No-o," she whispered doubtfully.