"Lucy, I am going down to the beach for a little while. Wait here till I come back, and don't tell any one where I have gone. I'll be back in a quarter of an hour."
Off he ran without waiting for a reply. Lucy remained quietly sitting, pulling the daisies, and plaiting them into a long chain, thinking how it would please her brother. The quarter of an hour passed, half an hour, an hour. Willie did not appear. Lucy was too faithful to leave her post; but time was beginning to hang heavy on her hands, and, besides, she was growing frightened at his absence. Lucy began to cry.
What was Willie about meanwhile? On reaching the shore, which was only about five minutes' walk from the house, his delight knew no bounds at being able to scamper about everywhere without being perpetually called to order. He ran races with the waves that were rolling in, clear and shining, and breaking in white foam on the yellow sands, and shouted with glee when he just saved his distance, and escaped without even wetting the toes of his boots. Then he tossed about the great heaps of brown weed and tangle, and searched for the lovely crimson sea-weed his elder sister used to gather and set so prettily on white paper when she came home for the holidays. Then, as the tide was low, he scrambled in among the rocks, and in the clear pools he found crabs and cockles and beautiful red and striped sea-anemones. Willie was very fond of natural history, which his papa used to teach him occasionally, and he became so absorbed in examining these pretty things that he not only forgot what his mamma had said, but also his promise to his little sister of returning in a quarter of an hour.
He was still busy poking about in the clear water of the pool, when he suddenly felt a cold plash on his foot. Starting up, he saw, to his dismay, that the water had been gradually creeping up and surrounding the low rock on which he was standing looking into the pool. At first he could not think how that had come about, as the sands had been quite dry toward the land side when he first went on to it. Suddenly it dawned on him that the tide must be rising. He did not know very well what the rising and falling tide meant, as his parents had not lived very long by the sea, but he remembered hearing his papa speak of people having been caught by the high tide and drowned. If he had started at once, he might still have got safely to shore by wading. But he was too much terrified to think of trying it. Looking about him, he saw a large flat rock near, and with some difficulty he succeeded in scrambling on to it. He thought it must be high enough to shelter him, until the tide should fall again. Had he not heard papa say that the tide fell as well as rose?
Placed thus, as he thought, in a position of safety, Willie's spirits began to rise again. All his fear had vanished, and he began to pretend to himself that he was a shipwrecked sailor cast away on a desert island; and he could not help laughing with glee when the merry little waves, dashing against the rock he was standing on, sent up sparkling showers of spray that seemed trying to reach him, but couldn't.
"Aha!" he thought, "you'll be clever if you catch me here on this big rock. I wish you'd be quick and go lower, though. I want to go home to mamma and Lucy."
Instead of going lower, however, the water kept rising higher and higher, until at length a wave, in breaking on the rock, sent a shower of spray in Willie's face.
The tide had been rising so fast that the shore seemed a long distance away now. The rock where he had been standing looking into the pool was now completely covered with water.
Oh, how he wished himself now sitting with Lucy plucking daisies in the field! How he repented of having been so disobedient to his kind mamma, who, he remembered now when it was too late, never forbade him anything except for his own good! How he resolved that he would never, never more be disobedient if he should ever again reach the land! But still the water kept rising.