t ahead, and he was
more mystified than ever. The tiny, fiery beams seemed to spring from
the dark, ugly, menacing cloud, or whatever it might be. Finally he
realized that it was the sun coming into the heavens from the east,
and--his heart roared within him as he began to grasp the truth--the
great black mass was land!

"Oh, God! It is land--land!" he tried to shriek. "Grace! Grace! Lookup!
See! The land!"

The arms about his neck tightened sharply and a low moan came to his
ears. Slowly and painfully he turned his head to look at the face that
had been so near in all those awful hours of the night, unseen. His
heart seemed to stop beating with that moan, for it bore the
announcement that the dear one was still alive.

It was still too dark to distinguish her features plainly. The face was
wet and slimy with the salt water; her hair was matted over the forehead
and wrapped in ugly strips about the once pretty face, now ghastly with
the signs of suffering, fear and--yes, death, he thought, as he strove
to see one familiar feature.

Into his eyes came a quizzical stare that slowly changed to an intense
look of bewilderment. Gradually they grew wider with horror.

The death-like face was not that of the girl he loved!

While he gazed numbly, almost insanely, upon the closed eyelids, they
slowly opened and a pair of wild, dark eyes gazed despairingly into his,
expressive of timidity more than fear. The trembling lips parted, but
the effort to speak ended in a moan. Again the eyes closed and her arms
slipped from his neck.

Every vestige of strength left him with this startling discovery and,
had his arm been anything but rigid with paralysis, she might have
drifted off with the billows, a fate which her voluntary action invited.

A great wave rushed them violently forward and the next moment Ridgeway,
faint, bewildered, and unable to grasp the full force of the remarkable
ending to that night in the water, found himself, still grasping his
limp burden and the broken spar, washed far upon the sands. A second
wave swept them higher, and he realized, as he lay gasping on the edge
of the waters, that the vast ocean was behind him and the beautiful
woman he had rescued by mistake.

CHAPTER XVII

WAS THE SEA KIND?

He lost consciousness in the attempt to drag himself and his companion
farther up the beach. His arms and legs refused to move in response to
his efforts, and the last he remembered was that his body