great ninth wave came majestically rolling in, sweeping
over the outer rocks--the Shangles--and then with a boom leaping at Carn
Du, running up it, as it were, in a mighty column of water, some twenty
feet even on a calm day.

Now was the time, calculated by practised eyes to the moment.

As the wave struck, Mark could be seen to grow suddenly less statuesque.
His arms would drop to his side, and then as it rushed up towards where
he stood, like some mighty sea-monster seeking to make him its prey,
Mark's hands joined above his head, he bent forward slightly, and then
with one tremendous leap seemed to leave the rocky ledge, and plunge
down head foremost into the wave.

The effect was electric, but its daring seemed to savour of madness.
There one moment stood the statuesque figure, white as a cameo cut in
the black rock, the next moment there was a gleam of something flashing
through the air, and passing into the deep blue wave, which, as if by
the contact of the figure, broke into silvery foam, rushing back like a
vast cascade towards the Shangles.

Where all before was smooth heaving water all was now rushing foam, as
the broken wave raced back, as if to pass between two narrow jagged
pieces of rock rising up like a gateway some fifty yards away before the
next wave came in.

The breath of the person who saw it for the first time was held as he
looked in vain for the brave diver, or wondered whether the act he had
seen was not some mad effort to destroy life. There was the foaming
water, there the black rocks, that were swept over by the roaring wave,
but now showing plainly amidst a sheet of white surf, with beyond them a
comparatively smooth surface, through which a current seems to run.

But there was no diver to be seen, nothing but the racing, hissing foam.

Yes: there he was--that was his head, rising out of the foam thirty or
forty yards away, and being carried to inevitable destruction against
those terrible jagged rocks.

No man could swim against the furious, racing torrent which was now
passing between them. No one could get out of such a current when once
in. It was horrible to look at, for the helpless swimmer seemed as if
he would be dashed against the crags and then float, stunned, wounded,
and helpless, out to sea.

That seemed to be Mark Penelly's fate; but no--as he neared the gate in
the Shangles he could be seen to turn over upon his back, keeping his
head well out of the water, paddl