“They have lost their oars. Their boat will be smashed on the rocks!”
With infinite pains, in danger every moment of losing her motor boat, she had worked her way close, then had shouted to them.
To her great disgust, she had seen the boy turn and laugh. Once again they were using the ocean as a plaything. Having thrown an anchor attached to a long painter among the rocks, they were riding the surf in their shallow punt.
A strange providence had saved them.
“But now they are at it again,” she told herself. “I’ll leave this island. I won’t be their keeper. I—”
She broke off, to stand for ten seconds, staring. A piercing scream had struck her ear. No cry of joy, this. As she looked she saw the boy alone on the slanting rock. On the crest of a wave she caught a fleck of white that was not foam.
“The girl! She’s out there! She’s swimming. She—”
Like a flash she shot down the rocky path. At the same instant an old man, his gray hairs flying, sprang down the other bank of the rocky run.
The old man reached the spot before her.
“No! No! Not you!” she panted. She knew that no white-haired patriarch could brave that angry swirl of foam and live.