For the time being the ice-field was quiet. The tidal wave had spent its force on the sandy beach.
That other, less violent disturbances, would follow the first, the girl knew right well. Hastily creeping to the brink of the dark pool, she strained her eyes for sight of a floating bit of cloth, a waving hand. There was none. Despair gripped her heart. Still she waited, and as she waited, there came the distant sound, growing ever louder, of another onrushing tide.
When Lucile went down into the dark pool she was not dead. She was conscious and very much alive. Very conscious she was, too, of the peril of her situation. Should that chasm close before she rose, or as she rose, she was doomed. In one case she would drown, in the other she would be crushed.
Down, down she sank. But the water was salt and buoyant. Now she felt herself rising. Holding her breath she looked upward. A narrow ribbon of black was to the right of her.
"That will be the open water," was her mental comment. "Must swim for it."
She was a strong swimmer, but her heavy fur garments impeded her. The sting of the water imperiled her power to remain conscious. Yet she struggled even as she rose.
Just when Marian had given up hope, she saw a head shoot above the water, then a pair of arms. The next instant she gripped both her companion's wrists and lifted as she never lifted before. There was wild terror in her eye. The roar of the second wave was drumming in her ears.
She was not a second too soon. Hardly had she dragged the half-unconscious girl from the pool than it closed with a grinding crash, and the ice-pan again tilted high in air.
The strain of this onrush was not so great. The cake held together.
Gradually it settled back to its place.
Marian glanced in the direction of the wreck. They were very much nearer to it than to the shore. She thought she saw a small cabin in the stern. Lucile must be relieved of her water soaked and fast-freezing garments at once.