ious force, crushing in her keel and timbers beneath the
shock. Without a word of explanation, he grasped the fair Rosabel in
his arms, and leaped into the angry surges, which were driven high upon
the rocks above him. The tide had risen so that there was hardly room
under the cliff for him to stand; but he bore her to this only partial
refuge from the fury of the storm.

The tempest increased in violence, and the huge billows rolled in with
impetuous fury upon him. Grasping his fair burden in his arms, with
Rosabel clinging to him in mortal terror, he paused a moment to look at
the angry sea. There was a narrow shelf of rock near him, against which
the waves beat with terrible violence. If he could only get beyond this
shelf, which projected out from the cliffs, he could easily reach the
Hole in the Wall, where Harvey Barth had saved himself in just such a
storm. He had borne Rosabel some distance along the beach, both drenched
by the lashing spray, and his strength was nearly exhausted. The
projecting shelf was before him, forbidding for the moment his further
progress.

[Illustration: THE COMING WAVE. Page 345].

Placing his left foot on a rock, his fair but heavy burden on his knee,
clasping her waist with his left hand, while his right was fastened for
support in a crevice of the cliff, he paused for an instant to recover
his breath, and watch for a favorable chance to escape from his perilous
position. Rosabel, in her terror, had thrown her arms around his neck,
clinging to him with all her might. When he paused, she felt, reposing
on his powerful muscles, that she was safe--she confessed it afterwards;
though, in that terrible sea, and near those cruel rocks, the strength
of the strongest man was but weakness. Leopold waited. If the sea would
only recede for an instant, it would give him the opportunity to reach
the broader beach beyond the shelf, over which he could pass to the Hole
in the Wall. It was a moment of hope, mingled with a mighty fear.

A huge billow, larger than any he had yet seen, was rolling in upon him,
crested and reeking with foam, and might dash him and his feeble charge,
mangled and torn, upon the jagged rocks. Still panting from the violence
of his exertion, he braced his nerves and his stout frame to meet the
terrible shock.

With every muscle strained to the utmost tension, he waited THE COMING
WAVE. In this attitude, with the helpless maiden clinging to him for
life, with the wreck