ore!" she exclaimed. "We must!"

"We--I--I think I could lift her over the place where the water is,"
said Ruth.

"But you might both slip in," objected Paul. "And the water is quite
deep on either side of this ledge of rocks. You see the ocean washes in
against them, and scoops out the sand. So that there is a deep channel,
ten feet or more, right alongside of the ledge of rocks. If you fell in
there----"

"Oh, don't speak of it!" begged Alice. "I wouldn't mind swimming if I
were prepared for it but it isn't exactly Summer yet, and with a
disabled foot----"

"It isn't to be thought of," finished Ruth. "But we _must_ get ashore
somehow, Paul. The water is getting higher every minute."

"Yes, the tide has just begun to come in," said the young actor. "I
should have noticed it before, but I didn't. Now I wonder--"

He did not finish, but gazed back toward the beach, nearly a quarter of
a mile away. To his surprise, and also alarm, not one of the members of
the moving picture company was in sight.

"That's strange," thought Paul, but he did not speak his thought aloud.

"Oh!" screamed Alice, so suddenly as to startle them all.

"What is the matter?" demanded Ruth.

"A wave splashed right up behind me! Look!"

The rising wind was sending little waves over the outer edge of the
small island of rocks on which the three were marooned. It was another
evidence that the tide was getting higher and higher.

"What _shall_ we do?" asked Ruth.

"We must get help--_somehow_!" Alice said. Then she looked shoreward, in
the direction Paul was gazing, and she uttered the single expression:

"Oh!"

But it was fraught with meaning.

"Why--they've gone!" gasped Ruth. "What--what----"

"They'll be back!" Paul interrupted. "Probably Mr. Pertell just thought
of some scene he could get, and he took them off down the beach to put
them all in it. They'll be back in a little while, and then we can
signal to them."

"If--if it isn't too--too late!" faltered Alice.

"Too late? What do you mean?" demanded her sister.

"I mean these rocks will soon be covered, and covered deep, too," Alice
said. "The high water mark is away above them."

"Is it, Paul?" demanded the older girl. She wanted the statement of
Alice disproved.

"I'm afraid it is," the young actor made answer. "And the tide, I am
sorry to say, is likely to be unusually high today. The moon has
something to do with it. But we will be taken off before then."

"Supp